.?^^ 


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AMONG  MY  BOOKS 


Among  My  Books 


Papers  on  Literary  Subjects  by 
the  following  Writers 


Augustine  Birrell 

Herbert  Paul 

Andrew  Lang 

Earl  of  Creive 

'■Ian   MacLaren ' 

'  John    Oli-ver  Hobbes  ' 

J.    P.    Mahaffy 

'  Vernon  Lee ' 

Austin  Dobson 

Stanley  Lane- Poole 

Leslie   Stephen 

Arthur    Machen 

'A' 

Hon.   Lionel  A.    Tollemache 

Edmund  Gosse 

George    W.    Smalley 

Go/dzuin  Smith 

D.    H.    Madden 

Percy  Fitzgerald                                                         1 

Reprinted 

from 

*  Literature '                             1 

With  a  Preface  by 
H.    D.    Traill,   D.C.L.. 


^ 


Mew  l^orft 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  CO. 
1898 


PREFACE 

THE  literary  causeries  which  form  the  contents 
of  this  volume  made  their  first  appearance 
in  the  pages  of  Literature;  and,  as  Editor  of 
that  Journal,  I  have  been  honoured  with  an  invita- 
tion to  introduce  this  collection  of  them  with  a  few 
words  of  my  own.  It  gives  pain  to  my  patriotism 
to  find  that  before  three  of  these  words  have  been 
set  down,  I  am  forced  to  become  a  borrower  from 
the  French  language,  but  in  truth  there  is  no  escape 
from  the  necessity  of  raising  this  forced  loan.  The 
word  causerie^  as  it  is  known  and  understood  in  the 
literary  and  artistic  world  of  France,  describes  the 
scope  and  spirit  of  these  papers  with  substantial 
accuracy ;  and  no  English  word  does.  They  are 
too  short  to  be  called  essays  in  the  modern  sense, 
though,  to  be  sure,  they  are  nearly  all  of  them 
longer  than  most  of  Bacon's,  with  whom  their 
authors  will  not  object  to  be  compared ;  and  only 
in  one  or  two  cases  do  they  at  all  approach  to  the 
character  of  a  specific  and  detailed  review  of  any 
particular  work.  They  are,  in  short,  what  it  was 
our  desire  that  they  should  be  when  we  sought  the 
aid  of  the  distinguished  men  and  women  of  letters 
who  have  contributed  them — that  is  to  say,  con- 

263741 


vi  Preface 


versational  discourses  on  every  and  any  variety 
of  literary  topic  that  might  suggest  itself  to  the 
student  and  book-lover  sitting  down  to  write  under 
the  conditions  and  in  the  surroundings  indicated 
by  the  title  of  the  series. 

This  title  has  of  course  been  criticised,  principally, 
no  doubt,  by  those  who  have  never  themselves 
undertaken  the  perplexing  duties  of  sponsor  at  one 
of  these  arduous  christenings  ;  and  it  has  been  said 
that  some  of  the  writers  show  no  signs  of  having 
derived  even  so  much  as  an  accidental  and 
momentary  inspiration  from  the  contents  of  their 
libraries.  Among  My  Books,  contend  these  cap- 
tious critics,  is  no  very  appropriate  title  for  a 
paper  which  might  have  been  inspired  (say  they) 
'  by  a  review  read  in  a  railway  train,  or  a  novel 
lying  on  a  club  table.'  I  confess  I  am  not  much 
moved  by  this  objection.  To  me  it  seems  that  the 
reflections  of  a  scholarly  and  thoughtful  mind  need 
not,  and  do  not,  savour  less  of  the  library,  because 
their  theme  may  have  offered  itself  from  the  world 
without.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  no  keener  whet 
to  the  studious  appetite  than  the  student  derives 
from  his  '  walks  abroad,'  nor  anything  more  likely 
to  move  him  to  utterance,  on  his  return  to  the 
library,  than  his  sharp  sense  of  the  contrast  between 
the  sobriety  of  temper,  the  maturity  of  judgment, 
the  perfection  of  form — in  a  word,  the  genuine, 
time-tried  merits  of  the  dead  and  gone  writers  on 
the  shelves  around  him,  and  the  hasty  verdicts,  the 
crude  deliverances,  the  sham  attractions,  the  noisy 


Preface  vii 


r^clamCy  with  which  current  literature   too   much 
abounds. 

This  observation,  however,  applies  but  to  a  few 
of  the  causeries  included  in  the  volume.  In 
the  large  majority  of  the  contributions  to  the 
Among  My  Books  series,  the  association  with  the 
library  is  not,  I  think,  difficult  to  trace.  A  book- 
lover  among  his  books  has  many  moods,  and  the 
spirits  of  their  departed  authors  speak  to  him 
with  many  voices.  Now  he  seems  to  hear  the 
plaintive  whisper  of  some  *  inheritor  of  unfulfilled 
renown'  who  was  promised  immortality,  and  for 
all  that  one  can  see  now,  has  as  good  a  right  to  it 
as  many  who  have  won  it ;  and  then  the  student 
feels  moved  to  remind  the  world  once  more  of  this 
forgotten  one,  and  to  protest  against  his  doom  of 
unmerited  neglect.  Now  it  is  he  himself  who  is 
the  accused,  and  as  he  listens  to  the  reproachful 
sigh  of  some  teacher  of  his  youth  who  has  long 
since  ceased  to  offer  him  a  '  key  of  the  universe,' 
his  conscience  urges  him  to  acknowledge  his  debt 
and  to  explain  his  defection.  Or  again,  '  the  book  ' 
may  suggest  *  the  critic,'  as  it  did  to  the  admired 
essayist  who  played  coryphaeus  to  the  series,  and 
diverted  his  readers  with  one  of  those  agreeable 
exercises  in  raillery  which  are  a  stumbling-block 
to  the  humourless  and  a  delight  to  everyone  else. 
Or  perhaps  it  is  not  a  single  voice  that  we  hear 
from  our  laden  book-shelves,  but  a  chorus  of  voices, 
a  moan,  a  murmur  as  from  an  overcrowded  popula- 
tion, asking  when  this  perpetual   and   suffocating 


viii  Preface 


addition  to  their  numbers  is  to  cease.  When  that 
happens,  a  terror  seizes  upon  the  bookman,  and, 
despairing  of  any  effective  results  from  the 
efforts  of  the  reviewers,  who,  to  do  them 
justice,  try  their  hardest  to  *  expose '  the  weakly 
infant  at  birth,  an  eminent  critic  propounds 
an  ingenious  plan  providing  for  the  automatic 
extinction  of  all  neglected  books  at  the  age 
of  one  hundred  years.  Few  of  us,  I  suppose, 
are  strangers  to  the  emotions  which  found  ex- 
pression in  this  proposal,  but  it  is  not  well  to 
encourage  them.  '  That  way  madness  lies.'  If 
for  a  moment  I  revive  them,  it  is  only  for  the 
purpose  of  illustrating  the  variety  of  the  ways  in 
which  their  libraries  have  appealed  to  the  various 
contributors  to  this  volume,  and  of  the  responses 
which  the  appeal  has  called  forth.  A  glance  at 
the  table  of  contents,  with  its  titles  ranging  from 
an  essay  on  style  to  a  chapter  of  biography,  and 
from  a  colloquy  on  ethics  to  a  Shakspearian  '  squib,' 
should  suffice  to  satisfy  the  reader  that  the  volume 
contains  food  for  the  most  diverse  literary  tastes. 
That  they  will  find  it  both  palatable  and  nutritious, 
the  reputation  of  its  purveyors  should  prove  a 
sufficient  guarantee.  H.  D.  T. 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE   .... 

I.   A   COLLOQUY   ON   CRITICISM 

Augustine  Birr  ell 

II.   HISTORY   AS   IT   IS  WRITTEN 
Andrew  Lang 

III.  UGLINESS   IN   FICTION 

^lan  MacLaren  ' 

IV.  THOUGHTS   ON   STYLE 

/  P.  Mahaffy 

V.    *  THE   ADVENTURES   OF   CHERUBINA 

Austin  Dobson 

VI.   PERISHABLE   BOOKS 

Leslie  Stephen 


PAGE 
V 


7 

15 
21 
29 
37 


VII.   ON   CERTAIN   DEFECTS   IN   MODERN   CRITICISM      45 

'A  • 


VIII.   ADDISON  S   TRAVELS 
Edmund  Gosse 

IX.    AMERICAN    HISTORIES 
Goldwin  Smith 

X.    THE     SCHOLARSHIP     OF    THE     EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY  .  .  .  • 

Herbert  Paul 


XL    A    LEAF   FROM   AN   INN   ALBUM 
Earl  of  Crewe 


51 

57 

63 

71 


Contents 


XII.    BYSSHE  :     A   DIALOGUE 
John  Oliver  Hobbes 

XIII.  KEYS   TO   THE   UNIVERSE  . 

Vernon  Lee 

XIV.  AN    ARAB    CLASSIC 

Stanley  Lane-Poole 

XV.   UNCONSCIOUS   MAGIC 
Arthur  Machen 

XVI.    REMINISCENCES   OF    'LEWIS   CARROLL 
Lionel  A.  Tollemache 

XVII.   A   SECOND   COLLOQUY   ON    CRITICISM 
A  ugustine  Birrell 

XVIII.    OLD    LAMPS   FOR   NEW 
George  W.  Smalley 

XIX.    BACON    ENTHRONED 
D.  H.  Madden 

XX.    AN    OLD   PUZZLE     . 

Leslie  Stephen 

XXI.   '  PICKWICK  '  .  .  . 

Percy  Fitzgerald 


PAGE 

79 

85 

91 

99 

109 

119 

125 

133 

141 

149 


AMONG    MY    BOOKS 

I 

A  COLLOQUY  ON  CRITICISM 

BY   AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL 

THERE  is  (about  this  we  are  pretty  well  certain) 
nothing  more  uncomfortable  and  disquieting 
to  the  ordinary  good  fellow — and  unless  you  adopt 
a  standard  of  excellence  so  high  as  must  damn  the 
whole  British  Empire,  most  of  the  sons  of  Adam 
are  good  fellows — than  to  find  himself  at  logger- 
heads with  his  neighbour  about  anything. 

The  people  who  love  to  differ  are  the  minority — 
they  may  be  found,  no  doubt,  if  not  in  every 
hamlet,  certainly  in  every  township,  but  for  all 
that  they  are  the  minority,  and  only  distantly  re- 
semble the  kindly  hosts  who  love  best  those  songs 
which  have  a  chorus  in  which  all  can  join. 

As  a  proof  of  this  I  would  instance  the  unhappi- 
ness  of  finding  yourself  positively  disliking  and 
despising  some  book  written,  it  may  be,  by  an 
acquaintance,  which  is  enjoying  great  popularity. 
To  take  it  up  only  to  find  its  '  pathos '  repulsive, 
its  *  humour '  disheartening,  its  *  merriment '  offen- 

A 


.•  'r'  ,^..    : ! .,', .«.'.  Among  My  Books 


sive,  and  then  laying  it  down  with  a  groan,  to  read, 
or,  worse  still,  to  be  told  by  some  honest  fellow,  of 
its  strange  power,  its  dramatic  grip,  its  enormous 
sale.  All  this  is  sheer  agony.  The  ordinary 
sorrows  of  life,  however  crushing,  are  shared  with 
humanity.  Tombs  and  monuments  remind  you  of 
other  men's  bereavements ; — the  list  of  bankrupts 
gives  you  a  feeling  of  kinship  with  half  the  town  ; 
but  this  inability  to  enjoy  what  apparently  all  the 
world  is  enjoying  is  intolerable. 

It  is  no  use  saying  de  gustibus^  etc.  In  the  first 
place  it  is  not  true.  Burke  long  ago  pointed  out, 
in  his  Treatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  that 
^  mankind  are  more  generally  agreed  about  Virgil 
than  they  are  about  Aristotle.  These  things  cut 
very  deep  into  life.  Were  you  to  be  condemned  to 
spend  three  months  at  sea  in  a  small  cabin  with  a 
stranger,  with  what  easy  composure  would  you 
hear  him,  the  first  night,  declare  himself  a  Hobbist, 
but  how  would  your  heart  sink  within  you  were  he 
to  aver  that  he  never  could  see  anything  funny  in 
.  *  Pickwick  ! '  It  is  a  very  serious  thing  to  differ 
radically  on  a  question  of  taste. 

And  so  it  comes  about  that  the  life  of  a  Critic  in 
these  times  is  well-nigh  intolerable,  and,  indeed,  it 
is  not  without  emotion — genuine  emotion — that  to- 
day I  see  launched  a  new  critical  adventure.  It 
makes  a  brave  appearance  as  it  pushes  off,  friends 
wave  their  handkerchiefs,  the  captain  is  on  the 
upper  deck,  the  crew  (well-tanned  veterans  some  of 
them)  wave  their  new  quills — it  is  indeed  a  gallant 


A  Colloquy  on  Criticism 


sight !  Yes — but  look  ahead  to  the  sea  where  the 
ship  must  go,  to  the  far-off  ocean,  whose  vast  tides 
pant  dumbly  passionate  with  dreams  of  all  the 
books,  as  yet  unwritten,  which  Literature  must 
review,  and  of  the  authors,  passionate  but  not 
dumb,  whom  we  shall,  if  we  do  our  duty,  most 
grievously  offend.  Duty!  the  word  instantly 
arrests  one,  just  as  did  the  word  'delicacy'  the 
great  Journalist  in  Friendship's  Garland.  *  Deli- 
cacy,' he  murmured,  '  surely  I  have  heard  the  word, 
in  the  old  days  before  I  learnt  to  call  Hepworth 
Dixon's  style  lithe  and  sinewy,  and  before  ever  I 
wrote  for  this  cursed  paper.'  So  at  the  word 
'  Duty '  I  stand  at  attention.  What  are  the  duties 
of  a  Critic? 

No  sooner  is  the  question  asked  than  tempera- 
ment steps  in  and  makes  everything  difficult. 
One  man's  temperament  leads  him  to  magnify  his 
office,  another's  to  minimise  it.  Pomposity  is  the 
besetting  sin  of  the  one,  cynicism  of  the  other.  Of 
the  two  Mr  Cynic  is  the  more  agreeable,  while  Mr 
Pomposity  does  the  least  harm.  It  is  desirable  to 
avoid  *  glasses '  and  to  see  things  with  the  naked 
eye. 

Can  it  be  said  that  to  review  new  books  as  they 
appear  is  a  public  duty  ?  The  fact  that  it  is  dis- 
charged privately  proves  nothing.  Until  1870,  in 
England  the  duty,  of  educating  the  young  was  dis- 
charged by  the  British  and  Foreign  School  Society 
and  the  National  Society,  whilst  for  many  a  long 
day  the  duties  of  nursing  the  poor  and  visiting 


Among  My  Books 


prisons  were  left  to  individual  charity.  The  main- 
tenance of  the  Fine  Arts  is,  after  a  beggarly 
fashion,  recognised  by  the  State,  and  there  are 
those  who  seriously  advocate  a  National  Theatre. 
Ought  Criticism  to  be  established  and  endowed? 
Should  the  Gazette  appear  with  a  Literary  supple- 
ment?    On  the  whole,  we  think  not. 

But  if  Criticism  is  a  matter  of  private  enterprise 
it  should  be  undertaken  in  a  suitable  spirit.  The 
famous  motto  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  assumes 
too  much.  A  Judge  is  not  self-elected,  neither 
does  he  choose  his  calendar  and  condemn  whom 
he  wills.  The  country  prosecutes,  the  jury  convicts, 
the  Judge  sentences.  Professor  Wilson,  the  noisiest 
of  all  professors,  owed  no  duty  to  the  public 
to  ridicule  John  Keats  in  Blackwood's  Magazine. 
Lady  Eastlake  had  no  better  right  to  slander 
Charlotte  Bronte  in  the  Quarterly  Review  than  has 
any  evil-tongued  woman  to  revile  her  neighbour  in 
the  market-place. 

The  duties  of  a  Critic  are  those  of  a  handicrafts- 
man who  takes  money  in  exchange  for  an  article  of 
his  manufacture.  He  must  do  his  best  to  learn  his 
business,  and,  having  learnt  it,  to  go  about  it  dili- 
gently and  honourably,  and  in  a  spirit  of  humanity. 
He  must  avoid  the  error  of  imagining  his  opinion 
to  be  a  great  matter,  but  he  is  not  entitled,  if  his 
criticism  be  printed  and  circulated,  to  treat  it  as  if 
it  were  of  no  moment  whatever. 

Critics  are  sometimes  accused  of  forgetting  the 
publicity,  the  almost  awful  publicity,  of  the  Print-- 


A  Colloquy  on  Criticism 


ing  Press,  and  of  scattering  abroad  in  the  lightness 
of  their  hearts  all  kinds  of  winged  words  and 
poisoned  arrows.  But  do  they  ?  You  have  only  to 
compare  the  trenchant  and  often  most  valuable 
criticism  you  hear  at  a  dinner  table  with  the  tame, 
emasculated  utterances  of  the  Press  to  realise  how 
paralysing  is  publicity  and  how  impossible  it  is  to 
say  in  print  what  you  may  utter  with  perfect 
propriety  in  private.  Nobody  can  truthfully  assert 
that  harshness  or  brutality  is  a  characteristic  of 
present-day  criticism.  Whether  it  be  wise  or 
foolish,  important  or  insignificant,  it  is  at  least 
good-natured.  Books  are  liberally  besmattered 
with  praise,  and  the  rarest  gifts  of  the  gods  are 
affected  to  be  bestowed  upon  writers  of  the  most 
humble  endowments.  Enthusiasm  seems  easily 
kindled.  Nobody,  as  I  have  already  said,  wishes 
to  differ  with  his  neighbour,  least  of  all  to  make  his 
V  differences  public.  *  Whistle  and  let  the  world  go 
by '  is  a  maxim  of  prudence,  and  one  very  generally 
observed  by  wise  men.  But  how  is  the  poor 
Critic  to  observe  it  ?  A  popular  novel,  a  popular 
volume  of  theology,  and  a  popular  poet  are  sent 
him  for  review.  He  reads,  and  as  he  reads  his 
gorge  rises.  They  are — so,  at  least,  the  unhappy 
writer  conceives — everything  fiction,  religion,  poetry 
ought  not  to  be  ;  what  should  be  natural  is  forced, 
what  should  be  devout  is  vulgar,  what  should  be 
felicitous  is  ill-expressed ;  grace,  dignity,  deli- 
cacy, charm — of  no  one  of  these  qualities  is 
there  so  much  as  a  trace.     Of  course,  the  reviewer 


Among  My  Books 


may  be  mistaken.  But  if  he  is,  his  whole  outlook 
upon  this  world  is  mistaken  ;  all  that  is  about  him 
is  mistaken  ;  his  library  is  all  wrong  ;  every  estimate 
he  has  formed,  every  lesson  he  has  learnt  is  all 
wrong — everything  is  upside  down,  if  these  books 
be  anything  but  the  poor  trash  his  judgment  tells 
him  they  are.  But  is  he  to  say  so  ?  The  novelist 
is  a  great  friend  of  his  wife's  sister,  the  divine  and 
the  poet  are  club  acquaintances  of  his  own.  He 
cannot  say  what  he  really  thinks  of  their  produc- 
tions— their  *  work,*  as  they  love  to  call  their  lucu- 
brations. Unable  to  say  what  he  thinks,  he 
proceeds  to  say  as  little  as  he  can  about  the  books 
before  him,  and  to  fill  up  his  space  with  general 
reflections,  which  are  deprived  of  all  value  because 
the  writer  does  not  apply  them  fearlessly  to  the 
matter  in  hand.     The  result  is  deplorable. 


II 

HISTORY  AS  IT  IS  WRITTEN 

BY  ANDREW  LANG 

IS  it  cynical  to  be  diverted  by  the  innocent 
absurdities  of  historians  ?  Nothing,  to  my 
mind,  can  be  more  amusing,  in  the  way  of  literature, 
than  to  read,  side  by  side,  the  works  of  two  historical 
writers  who  deal  with  the  same  period,  and,  to  a 
great  extent,  with  the  same  authorities,  but  who 
differ  in  sentiment.  I  have  lately  read,  in  pure  in- 
dolence, the  chapters  on  Mary  Stuart  and  Elizabeth 
Tudor,  by  Mr  Froude  and  Mr  Patrick  Eraser 
Tytler.  Mr  Tytler  was  no  Mariolater.  He 
thought  that  Mary  had  a  guilty  knowledge  of  her 
husband's  murder,  but  as  to  how  much  Mary  knew 
he  was  uncertain.  The  Regent  Murray  he  re- 
garded as  a  great,  and,  on  the  whole,  as  a  good  man, 
with  a  dash  of  the  Pecksniff.  Mr  Froude  had  no 
doubt  that  Mary  was  deep  in  her  lord's  murder  ; 
Murray  he  admired  as  the  Bayard  of  early  Protes- 
tantism. As  to  Elizabeth,  Mr  Froude  had  few 
illusions.     His  opinion  about  her  guilty  knowledge 


8  Among  My  Books 

of  Amy  Robsart's  murder  is  rather  like  Mr  Ty tier's 
opinion  about  Mary's  guilty  knowledge  ofDarnley's 
murder,  though  not  so  frankly  expressed. 

There  does  not  seem  to  be  a  very  wide  difference 
between  the  ideas  of  these  two  historians,  but,  when 
we  compare  their  works,  we  are  entertained  and 
edified  by  what  they  each  leave  out  in  their  uncon- 
scious siippressiones  veri.  I  would  not  accuse  either 
gentleman  of  being  consciously  unsportsmanlike  ; 
nevertheless  each  omits  exactly  the  points  on  which 
the  other  lays  stress.  This,  of  course,  is  futile. 
The  facts  are  accessible,  many  of  them  are  already 
printed ;  moreover  one  author  is  sure  to  tell  what 
the  other  may  be  trusted  to  leave  untold.  Yet 
they  cannot  be  trusted  to  be  quite  candid.  Thus 
to  give  a  few  examples,  there  was  the  return  of  the 
forfeited  Earl  of  Lennox  to  Scotland  in  1 564.  Mr 
Froude  admits  that  Elizabeth  had  '  supported  his 
petitions'  for  restoration  to  his  lands.  In  fact 
Elizabeth  had  warmly  urged  it.  But,  as  soon 
as  Mary  had  granted  Elizabeth's  desire,  that  lady 
changed  her  mind.  Mr  Tytler  has  several  pages 
on  this  subject ;  he  quotes  the  replies  of  Mary's 
ministers  as  to  Elizabeth's  insistence  on  Lennox's 
pardon,  as  to  Elizabeth's  care  to  have  evidence  of 
her  fickle  behaviour  destroyed.  Mr  Froude  omits 
all  that ;  he  merely  says  that  a  variety  of  pretexts 
were  invented  for  delay  or  refusal. 

Melville  was  now  sent  by  Mary  to  England,  and 
both  our  authors  cite  a  Latin  letter,  from  Elizabeth 
to  Cecil,  in  which  the  English  Queen  admits  that 


History  as  it  is  Written 


she  is  entirely  unable  to  find  a  reply  to  her  Scottish 
sister.  '  Invenias  igitur  aliquid  boni  quod  in 
mandatis  scriptis  Randall  dare  possim.'  This 
seems  a  simple  affair,  each  historian  has  to  trans- 
late an  easy  piece  of  Latin.  Let  us  see  how  they 
do  it.  Here  is  Elizabeth's  note  to  Cecil ;  both 
historians  give,  practically,  the  same  Latin,  except 
that,  if  Mr  Tytler  quotes  correctly,  then  Mr  Froude 
loyally  amends  her  Majesty's  spelling  and  grammar. 
So  I  offer  Mr  Froude's  text. 

*  In  ejusmodi  labyrintho  posita  sum  de  responso 
meo  reddendo  ad  Reginam  Scotiae'  [Tytler,  for 
'  labyrintho,'  '  laberintho,'  for  *  ad  Reginam,'  *  R. 
(Reginae)  Scotiae '],  *  at  nescio  quomodo  illi  satis- 
faciam,  quum  neque  toto  isto  tempore  illi  ullum 
responsum  dederim,  nee  quid  mihi  dicendum 
nunc  sciam.  Invenias  igitur  aliquid  boni  quod  in 
mandatis  scriptis  Randall  dare  possim  [possem,  in 
Tytler],  et  in  hac  causa  tuam  opinionem  mihi 
indica.' 

Even  as  to  Cecil's  endorsement  of  this  scrap  our 
authors  differ.  Mr  Froude  has  '  endorsed  in  Cecil's 
hand  "  The  Queen's  Majesty's  writing,  being  sick, 
September  23."' 

Mr  Tytler  has,  *  Thus  backed  by  Cecil,  23rd 
September,  1564.  At  St  James's  The  Queen  writ- 
ing to  me  being  sick.'  Who  was  sick?  The 
Queen,  in  Mr  Froude's  opinion ;  Cecil,  in  Mr 
Tytler's  view.  *  Elizabeth  was  harassed  into  ill- 
ness '  (Froude) ;  '  Cecil  was  then  confined  to  his 
chamber  by   sickness'   (Tytler).      Which    author 


lo  Among  My  Books 

could  not  copy  an  endorsement  without  omissions, 
or  additions,  and  blunders  ? 

Now  let  us  compare  the  translations  of  this  short 
and  simple  epistle  : — 

Tytler's  Translation.  Froude's  Translation. 

'I  am  involved  in  such  a  la  by-  'I  am  in  such  a  labyrinth 
rinth,  regarding  the  reply  to  the  about  the  Queen  of  Scots  (no  re- 
letter  of  the  Queen  of  Scots,  that  ference  to  her  letter),  that  what 
I  know  not  how  I  can  satisfy  her,  to  say  to  her  or  how  to  satisfy 
having  delayed  all  this  time  her  I  know  not.  I  have  left  her 
sending  her  an  answer,  and  now  letter  to  me  all  this  time  un- 
really  being  at  a  loss  what  I  answered,  nor  can  I  tell  what  to 
must  say.  Find  me  out  some  answer  now.  Invent  something 
good  excuse y  which  I  may  plead  kind  for  me^  which  I  can  enter 
in  the  despatches,  to  be  given  to  in  Randolph's  commission,  and 
Randolph,  and  let  me  know  give  me  your  opinion  about  the 
your  opinion  in  this  matter.'  matter  itself.' 

Now,  does  invenias  aliquid  boni  mean  *  Invent 
something  kind,'  or  '  Find  out  some  good  excuse  ?  ' 
It  cannot  well  mean  both,  and  the  difference  is  im- 
portant. 

A  little  later  both  historians  describe  the  situa- 
tion when  Elizabeth  made  Lord  Robert  Dudley  an 
Earl.  Mr  Froude  (whose  ignorance  of  human 
nature  one  admiringly  envies)  holds  that  Elizabeth 
was  honest  in  wishing  to  give  Leicester  up  to  Mary. 
Mr  Tytler  is  strongly  of  the  opposite  opinion. 
Well,  the  authority  of  both  historians  here  is  Sir 
James  Melville,  Mary's  envoy.  Mr  Tytler,  natur- 
ally, one  may  say  inevitably,  cites  the  famous 
passage, '  The  Queen  could  not  refrain  from  putting 
her  hand  in  his '  (Leicester's)  *  neck  to  kittle  him, 


History  as  it  is  Written  1 1 

smilingly,  the  French  Ambassador  and  I  standing 
by.'  Mr  Froude  does  not  cite  this  passage.  Yet 
one  woman  does  not  usually  cede  to  another  an 
admirer  whom  she  cannot  refrain  from  tickling 
in  public.  Mr  Froude  doubts  Melville's  general 
veracity,  but  quotes  him  just  where  he  is  not  quoted 
by  Mr  Tytler. 

One  might  go  on  quoting  these  parallels,  but 
I  confine  myself  to  one  case,  which  seems  very 
egregious.  After  the  Rebellion  in  the  North  ( 1 569), 
when  Mass  was  celebrated  once  more  in  the 
desecrated  Cathedral  of  Durham,  Northumberland 
fled  across  the  Border,  and  was  sold  to  Murray  by 
Hector  Armstrong,  of  Harlaw.  This  was  the  one 
crime  which  Borderers  could  not  pardon.  Murray 
then,  according  to  Mr  Tytler,  proposed  to  exchange 
the  betrayed  Northumberland  for  Mary,  his  sister,  a 
captive  in  England.  What  he  meant  to  do  with 
Mary, '  'Tis  better  only  guessing.'  At  all  events,  he 
promised  that  she  'should  live  her  natural  life.' 
This  proposal  to  sell  Northumberland  to  his  death, 
in  exchange  for  Mary,  Mr  Tytler  cites  from  *  Copy 
of  the  Instrument,'  endorsed  with  names  of  certain 
Scotch  nobles,  allies  of  Murray's,  in  Cecil's  hand. 
Knox,  at  the  same  date,  sent  a  letter  bidding  Cecil 
^strike  at  the  root' — Mary.  Mr  Tytler  also  cites 
Murray's  instructions  to  his  envoy,  and  his  demand 
for  Mary's  person,  from  a  note  '  wholly  in  Cecil's 
hand,'  and  adds  that  Lesley,  Bishop  of  Ross, 
detected  a  proposition  *  equivalent  to  signing 
Mary's   death  warrant.'     Then  Murray  was   shot 


12  Among  My  Books 

by  Bothwellhaugh,  and  the  arrangement  fell 
through. 

Well,  Mr  Froude  quotes  much  from  Murray's  in- 
structions, as  Mr  Tytler  does,  but  about  the 
proposed  surrender  of  Northumberland  in  exchange 
for  Mary  Mr  Froude  does  not  say  one  single  word 
(chapter  53,  1570),  nor  a  word  about  the  Bishop  of 
Ross's  remonstrance,  any  more  than  Mr  Tytler 
dwells  on  the  said  Bishop's  alleged  confessions  that 
Mary  poisoned  her  first  husband,  and  so  forth. 
When  we  come  to  these  episcopal  revelations,  it  is 
Mr  Tytler's  turn  to  leave  things  out.  To  be  sure, 
the  learned  Bishop  confessed  rather  too  much,  like 
Topsy.  Why  should  Mary,  when  Queen  of  France, 
make  herself  a  premature  Dowager  by  poisoning 
her  husband,  the  King  ? 

It  would  be  worth  while  to  make  a  tabular 
statement  of  all  Mary's  iniquities,  from  the  days 
when  she  was  her  uncle's  mistress  till  she  poisoned 
her  first  husband,  blew  up  her  second,  and  tried  to 
poison  her  little  boy  with  an  apple.  A  greyhound 
shared  the  apple  with  her  pups,  and  they  all  ex- 
pired incontinently.  Greyhounds  are  notoriously 
fond  of  apples,  and  apt  to  share  an  apple  with  their 
whelps,  while  apples  are  easy  things  to  poison.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  mere  glance  through  Mr  Tytler's 
pages  supplies  a  long  list  of  Murray's  treacheries  : 
*  He  betrays  Mary's  intentions,'  '  Treachery  of  the 
Lord  James,'  '  Conspiracy  of  Murray  and  Argyll,' 
'  Art  and  part  in  Riccio's  murder,'  and  so  forth, 
till   he   plunders   his   sister's   diamonds,  and   tries 


History  as  it  is  Written  13 

to   get  hold   of   her    by   betraying   Northumber- 
land. 

Thus  is  history  written,  till  one  despairs,  if  not  of 
history,  at  least  of  historians.  There  is  a  pleasing 
edition  of  Burnet,  with  the  notes  of  Swift  and  other 
contemporaries.  An  edition  of  Mr  Froude,  cum 
notis  variorum^  with  the  errors  corrected  and  the 
omissions  supplied,  would  also  be  a  valuable  work, 
and  much  more  humorous  than  The  Comic  History 
of  England. 


Ill 

UGLINESS  IN  FICTION 

BY  '  IAN   MACLAREN  ' 

NOVEL  readers  escaped  from  the  sex  novel 
with  a  sense  of  relief,  and  were  beginning 
to  hope  that  fiction  was  returning  to  the  decencies 
of  life,  when  the  slum  novel  appears  and  fills  us 
with  despair.  For  the  majority  of  us  hard-working 
men  (and  women),  toiling  considerably  more  than 
eight  hours  a  day  in  various  professions  and 
businesses,  fiction  is  an  appreciable  relief  and  re- 
inforcement. An  hour  with  a  well-written  novel 
when  the  work  of  the  day  is  done — say  at  lo  P.M.,  if 
we  be  fortunate — consoles  one  for  a  long  spell  of 
care  and  drudgery.  As  a  class,  we  are  not  un- 
reasonable nor  exacting ;  we  do  not  complain  that  no 
*  Henry  Esmond '  nor  *  Heart  of  Midlothian '  is  to 
be  heard  of  anywhere,  but  are  unaffectedly  grateful 
for  a  tale  which  is  interesting  and  well  written.  If 
the  author  be  able  to  move  us  to  tears  or  laughter 
after  an  honest,  manly  fashion,  or  to  set  us  a- thinking 
on  the  problems  of  society,  or  to  brace  us  to  do  our 


1 6  Among  My  Books 

duty  better,  or  to  waken  us  up  by  a  good  adventure 
story,  then  our  hearts  grow  warm  to  the  man,  and 
we  rouse  ourselves  from  arm-chairs  to  acknowledge 
our  debt,  and  afterwards  burn  the  letter  as  becomes 
self-respecting  Englishmen  who  are  more  ashamed 
of  emotion  than  of  anything  else  under  the  sun. 
Nor  are  we  really  squeamish  and  prudish,  some  of 
us  having  had  occasion  to  know  almost  as  much  of 
life  as  a  woman  novelist,  but  let  us  confess  that  we 
would  prefer  to  keep  (fairly)  good  company  in  our 
hours  of  rest.  We  are  perfectly  aware  that  people 
swear  and  do  other  things  which  are  worse,  but  with- 
out being  Pharisees  we  distinctly  object  to  books 
which  swear  on  every  page  and  do  other  things  on 
the  page  between,  being  our  companions  for  the 
hour  when  the  lamp  is  lit  and  the  streets  are  quiet. 
It  may  be  our  narrowness,  and  we  are  prepared  to 
hear  that  we  are  Philistines  and  destitute  of  the 
very  beginnings  of  culture  if  we  are  rather  sick  of 
a  certain  monotonous  adjective  and  the  other  things. 
We  condoned  oaths  in  Thackeray  because  it  was 
the  custom  of  very  agreeable  people  to  swear  then, 
but  it  is  only  the  custom  of  very  disagreeable 
people  now,  and  while  some  of  us  in  various  walks 
of  life  have  to  endure  such  people,  at  times  we  do 
not  hanker  after  their  unnecessary  and  voluntary 
company. 

This  deplorable  disability  to  appreciate  a  highly- 
flavoured  book  does  not  blind  one  to  its  frequent 
force  and  partial  veracity.  It  deals,  let  it  be 
granted,   with   elemental   facts   of  savage   life   at 


Ugliness  in  Fiction  17 

home  and  at  first  hand.  The  author  has  heard 
with  his  own  ears  and  not  another's,  and  has  seen 
with  his  own  eyes,  and  whatsoever  he  has  heard 
and  seen  he  has  written  ;  or  if  there  be  some  things 
kept  back  they  are  only  such  as  could  not  be 
legally  put  into  print.  One  must  also,  as  a  rule, 
acknowledge  with  admiration  the  dramatic  sense 
of  the  author  who  recognises  a  situation  at  a  glance, 
and  his  artistic  skill  who  presents  it  with  a  firm 
touch.  It  is  the  substance,  not  the  workmanship, 
which  offends  and  repels.  Very  likely  the  subject 
is  a  chapter  in  the  life  either  of  a  coster  girl  or  a 
street  arab,  which  is  sometimes  disgusting,  some- 
times immoral,  and  always  unpleasant.  Perhaps 
there  is  a  minute  description  of  a  bank  holiday 
excursion,  where  lovers  drink  incredible  quantities 
of  beer,  and  eat  like  ravenous  beasts.  There  will 
almost  certainly  be  a  fight  between  two  women, 
with  full  details,  and  if  there  be  a  death-scene,  the 
mother  will  discuss  with  a  neighbour  whether  the 
coffin  should  be  '  helm  '  or  '  hoak '  while  her  daughter 
lies  a-dying,  and  relate  with  gusto  how  the  coffin 
lid  was  at  last  fastened  down  on  her  husband's 
body,  whose  dropsy  had  made  him  an  inconvenient 
size,  by  the  simple  expedient  of  the  widow's 
weight  being  added  to  that  of  two  undertakers. 
One  breathes  throughout  an  atmosphere  of  filth, 
squalor,  profanity,  and  indecency,  and  is  seized  with 
moral  nausea.  There  are  such  things  as  drains, 
and  sometimes  they  may  have  to  be  opened,  but  one 
would  not  for  choice  have  one  opened  in  his  library. 

B 


1 8  Among  My  Books 

When  one  asks  why  this  kind  of  book  should  be 
written,  and,  let  us  suppose,  by  an  author  of  power 
— did  not  Rudyard  Kipling  turn  aside  to  write 
'  Badalia  Herodsfoot '  and  thereby  incur  a  consider- 
able paternal  responsibility? — it  will  doubtless  be 
replied,  because  it  is  true  and  it  is  desirable  that 
people  should  know  the  truth.  If  costers  or  other 
people  are  living  after  a  bestial  fashion,  then  this 
ought  to  be  known  to  all  whom  it  may  concern. 
Which  means  that  such  books  are  really  semi- 
philanthropic  and  are  novels  with  a  purpose,  fall- 
ing into  the  class  of*  Nicholas  Nickleby '  and  *  Never 
too  Late  to  Mend.'  This  leaves  the  question  of  their 
art  untouched,  but  it  vindicates  their  intention,  and 
so  at  the  worst  the  slum  novel  is  only  a  mistake. 
It  is,  however,  a  very  distinct  mistake.  For  one 
thing  the  people  who  are  addressed  would  be 
far  more  likely  to  be  impressed  were  the  life  of 
this  under-world  stated  in  terms  of  fact  and  not 
tricked  out  as  fiction.  Besides,  it  is  impossible  that 
this  can  be  the  whole  life  of  the  East-end— this 
inferno  of  vice  and  violence.  Is  there  no  purity, 
no  loyalty,  no  kindliness,  no  self-respect  among 
these  people?  It  is  incredible  that  they  should  all 
be  ruffians  and  loose  women ;  and,  therefore,  it  is 
certain  that  one  side  of  life  is  ignored  ;  and,  if  this 
be  so,  the  description  is  disproportionate  and  un- 
reliable. The  writer  has  seen  only  such  things  as 
he  proposed  to  see ;  they  could  not,  of  course,  be 
the  things  he  wished  to  see  ;  and,  instead  of  being 
realistic,  his  book  is  an  inverted  idealism  in  which — 


Ugliness  in  Fiction  19 

manipulating  facts  according  to  his  mind — the 
author  presents  what  is  morally  ugly  as  another 
idealist  would  present  what  is  morally  beautiful. 
Possibly  the  author  may  repudiate  any  purpose 
and  may  content  himself  with  pleading  the  com- 
pulsion of  his  art.  This  life  exists  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  and  it  has  appealed  to  his  literary  sense  ;  it  is 
a  subject,  and  he  has  represented  what  he  has  seen. 
As  a  painter  takes  a  black  sullen  pool,  so  a  novelist 
has  chosen  this  sink  of  human  life — this  is  his 
metier ^  and  nothing  remains  to  be  said.  It  is  his 
form  of  art,  and  has  to  be  judged  by  the  rules  of 
art.  If  so,  a  question  at  once  occurs  to  the  simple 
reader,  and  he  would  be  greatly  obliged  by  an 
answer.  Is  the  representation  of  moral  ugliness 
really  artistic?  As  one  understands  it,  the  chief 
end  of,  say,  sculpture  is  to  create  in  marble  that 
idea  of  physical  beauty  which  lies  in  the  back- 
ground of  the  mind  ;  and  while  suffering  may  be 
included  in  the  beautiful,  as  for  instance  in  the 
Dying  Gladiator,  or  much  of  Michelangelo's  work, 
no  sculptor  of  the  first  order  has  set  himself  to 
embody  in  marble  hideous  deformity.  Painters 
have  not  shrunk  from  crucifixions,  but  they  have 
not  chosen  leprosy,  although  the  silver  sheen  had 
lent  itself  well  to  treatment;  nor  a  surgical  operation, 
although  the  blood — well  one  need  not  press  that 
point.  Why  is  a  humpback  or  a  leper  inadmissible  ? 
Because  they  are  the  violation  of  the  law  of  things  ; 
they  are  imperfection  and  disease.  Why  should 
the  artist  in  life  forsake  the  quest  of  the  perfect  and 


20  Among  My  Books 

the  beautiful,  wrought  out  often  through  poverty 
and  agony,  and  spend  his  skill  on  what  is  loathsome 
and  disgusting?  Is  he  not  also  bound  to  the 
service  of  the  ideal,  and  is  it  not  his  function  to 
fling  out  before  us  that  model  of  high  character  and 
living  which  we  all  have  imagined,  after  which  we 
all  strive,  but  which  we  cannot  express ;  or  is  it 
that  the  canon  of  beauty  which  guides  the  sculptor 
and  the  painter  has  no  authority  over  the  novelist, 
and  he  alone  of  artists  has  the  liberty  of  deformity  ? 


IV 

THOUGHTS   ON   STYLE 

BY  J.   P.   MAHAFFY 

LITERARY  men  of  old  were  supposed,  I 
believe,  to  wander  at  will  among  their 
books  and  cull  from  their  shelves  what  took 
their  fancy.  If  such  was  indeed  the  case,  they 
enjoyed  a  leisure  very  different  from  that  of 
our  generation.  The  man  of  books  no  longer 
brings  out  of  his  treasure-house  things  new  and 
old,  like  the  householder  in  the  Gospel,  but 
these  things  are  borne  in  upon  him  by  circum- 
stances, and  his  mind  is  determined  by  what  he 
has  to  read.  Who  can  avoid,  at  this  moment, 
reading  critic  after  critic  upon  the  *  Life  of 
Tennyson,'  a  book  which  has  hit  the  fortunate 
moment,  '  when  nothing  else  was  going  on,'  and 
so  has  got  an  ample  hearing.  A  college  Don  in 
Dublin  is  led  by  his  examinations  at  this  same 
moment  to  re-read  the  great  classics  which  have 
long  been  part  of  his  mental  furniture,  and  so  I 
chance  to  have  before  me  again  Virgil,  the  literary 


22  Among  My  Books 

artist  whom  common  consent  has  declared  to  be 
the  most  Tennysonian  of  the  ancients.  Not  that 
our  poet's  direct  obligations  to  Virgil  are  so  marked 
as  those  to  Theocritus,  with  whom  he  seems  to 
have  been  saturated,  but  the  general  resemblance 
is  surely  most  remarkable.  Virgil  is  far  the 
greatest  of  the  Roman  poets,  not  by  reason  of  his 
great  ideas — in  that  Lucretius  is  his  rival — but  by 
reason  of  the  combined  purity  and  dignity  of  his 
style,  which  bears  the  evidence  of  being  deli- 
berately and  consciously  polished  to  the  utmost 
degree  of  propriety  and  refinement.  Illustrations 
abound  on  every  page  of  his  work.  Take  but  one, 
not  above  the  average,  in  his  brief  lines  on  the 
palace  of  Circe,  which  .^neas  passes  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  seventh  book  of  the  epic,  from  which 
I  select  but  two  : 

Hinc  exaudiri  gemitus,  iraeque  leonum 
Vincla  recusantum  et  sera  sub  nocte  rudentum. 

You  feel  that  Virgil  must  have  heard  the  strange 
grating  and  metallic  sound  of  a  lion's  roar  at  some 
Roman  amphitheatre.  And  so  he  uses  the  word 
rudentum.  Such  is  the  kind  of  perfection  to  be 
found  all  through  Tennyson,  and  when  one  of  our 
weekly  oracles  of  wisdom,  in  its  recent  comparison 
of  Shakespeare  with  him,  said  many  true  things,  it 
seems  to  me  to  have  missed  an  important  contrast 
in  this  respect.  To  talk  of  the  style  of  Shakespeare 
seems  to  me  odd  and  irrelevant.  The  style  of 
Tennyson  is  of  the  essence  of  his  greatness. 


Thoughts  on  Style  23 

This  reminds  me  of  an  interesting  remark  in 
Gustave  Flaubert's  correspondence.  'What  dis- 
tinguishes great  genius  is  generalisation  and 
creation  ;  it  resumes  scattered  personalities  in  a 
type,  and  brings  new  characters  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  humanity.  Shakespeare  is  something 
tremendous  in  this  respect ;  he  was  not  a  man, 
but  a  continent :  there  are  crowds  and  countries 
in  him.  Such  men  have  no  need  of  attending  to 
style.  They  are  strong  in  spite  of  all  their  faults, 
and  even  because  of  them  ;  but  we,  the  little  ones, 
are  worth  nothing  except  by  finish  of  execution. 
V.  Hugo,  in  this  century,  will  eat  up  everybody, 
although  he  is  full  of  faults.  I  venture  on  this 
proposition — that  great  men  often  write  very  badly, 
and  so  much  the  better  for  them.  It  is  not  to 
them  that  we  must  go  for  the  art  of  form,  but  to 
men  like  Horace  and  La  Bruy^re.'  I  should  leave 
out  V.  Hugo,  who  certainly  aimed  at  a  splendid 
style,  and  should  put  in  Walter  Scott,  who  now 
offends  the  young  Scotland  of  Stevensonians  by 
the  negligences  of  his  diction.  But  he,  too,  was 
far  too  great  for  style ;  he  was  unfolding  such  a 
wealth  of  human  nature,  galleries  of  great  portraits, 
of  nationalities,  volumes  of  history  and  of  legend, 
that  he  had  neither  time  nor  care  for  the  graces  of 
a  polished  style.  Look  how  his  people  live,  just 
like  the  people  of  Shakespeare,  in  the  hearts  of  all 
English-speaking  people,  nay,  even  in  the  hearts 
of  foreigners,  for  Scott,  owing  to  his  want  of  style, 
is  capable  of  translation  !     On  the  other  hand,  there 


24  Among  My  Books 

is  something  so  personal  in  an  elaborated  style  that 
the  characters  are  thrown  into  the  shade  by  the 
personality  of  the  poet,  and  so  Tennyson  has  not 
left  us  a  single  character  whose  name  is  a  house- 
hold word,  such  as  Scott  and  even  far  lesser  men 
have  created.  His  imagination  has  not  furnished 
us  with  a  great  hero.  The  portrait  of  Arthur 
Hallam  is  drawn  from  real  life  with  loving  care, 
but  fades  out  in  the  great  *  In  Memoriam '  before 
the  deep  world-problems  which  fill  the  poet's 
mind,  and  so  that  exquisite  monument  of  personal 
grief  is  like  the  Attic  tomb  reliefs,  in  which  we 
wonder  at  the  poetical  pictures  of  human  sorrow, 
without  knowing  or  caring  what  individual  bereave- 
ment they  were  designed  to  commemorate. 

But  here  I  am,  discoursing  of  style,  concerning 
which  my  fastidious  academic  friends  tell  me  I 
know  nothing.  Nevertheless,  every  man  who 
writes  must  have  some  notions  about  good  and 
bad  writing,  though  they  may  be  faulty.  In  a 
paper  just  published  I  had  reason  to  compare 
two  authors  whom  I  called  Miss  Austen  and  Marie 
Corelli.  An  excellent  academic  Mentor  said  that 
was  wrong ;  1  should  have  said  for  conformity's 
sake,  'Jane  Austen.'  But,  if  I  could  only  clear 
myself  of  the  grave  charge  of  having  courted 
alliteration,  I  should  defend  my  phrase  by  the 
fact  that  when  we  were  young  we  always  heard 
from  our  prim  and  staid  relations  of  Miss  Austen, 
a  lady  of  whom  they  spoke  with  respectful  but 
distant   admiration.      They   would    have   thought 


Thoughts  on  Style  25 

Jane  rather  forward.  And  this  marks  the  con- 
trast to  which  I  was  pointing  between  certain 
older  and  newer  novelists. 

I  have  just  said  that  thoughts  on  style  may  be 
expected  from  any  literary  source,  and,  by  v/ay  ot 
curious  confirmation,  where  do  I  find  the  latest 
essay  on  this  subject?  Actually  in  the  Hellenic 
Journal^  where  there  is  a  paper  not  only  very 
instructive  but  very  interesting  on  the  well-known 
tract  *  On  the  Sublime,'  which  dates  from  the  purist 
Renaissance  in  the  days  of  Augustus.  The  author, 
who  is  apparently  a  literary  amateur,  tells  us  his 
ideas  concerning  fine  style,  as  opposed  to  poverty 
and  vulgarity  on  the  one  side,  artificiality  and 
bombast  on  the  other.  Mr  Rhys  Roberts  has 
given  an  excellent  analysis  of  this  very  sensible 
and  '  modern '  piece  of  criticism,  and  only  shows 
in  one  spot  that  he  has  not  taken  the  lessons  of 
Longinus  adequately  to  heart.  I  do  not  think 
the  off-hand  judgment  disparaging  Bacchylides  in 
comparison  with  Pindar  is  wholly  justified  by  what 
we  read  in  the  new  papyrus.  There  seems  to 
be,  with  great  simplicity  of  structure  and  of  metre, 
a  rich  vocabulary,  and  a  great  deal  of  fine  and 
moving  pathos  in  these  odes.  But  it  is  hard  to 
judge  aesthetically,  when  impeded  by  the  trouble 
of  deciphering  even  an  easy  hand.  There  is  no 
need,  however,  to  anticipate  the  verdict  of  scholars 
which  will  be  let  loose  upon  the  world  almost 
immediately.  But  I  return  to  the  interesting 
passage  thus  translated  in  the  Hellenic  Journal : — 


26  Among  My  Books 

*  The  legislator  of  the  Jews,  no  ordinary  man, 
having  formed  and  expressed  a  worthy  conception 
of  the  might  of  the  Godhead,  writes  at  the  very 
beginning  of  his  Book  of  Laws: — "And  God  said" 
— what  ?  Let  light  be,  and  it  was ;  let  earth  be, 
and  it  was.'  What  a  strange  bathos  in  expres- 
sion !  And  has  Mr  Roberts  never  appreciated  our 
Authorised  Version  ?  Longinus  is  quoting  loosely 
from  some  version  (not  the  LXX)  read  out  to  him 
by  some  Jewish  friend.  But  surely  the  A.  V.  is 
just  as  accurate — '  Let  there  be  light,  and  there 
was  light.  Let  the  dry  land  appear,  and  it  was 
so.'     At  all  events,  this  was  English. 

I  suppose  it  is  only  in  so  very  simple  an  instance 
that  we  can  reproduce  sublimity  in  a  translation. 
And  how  many  of  us  can  really  understand  the 
beauties  of  any  language  but  our  own  ?  When  I 
see  criticisms  on  French  and  German  masterpieces 
written  by  men  who  are  unable  either  to  speak  or 
write  these  languages,  it  reminds  me  of  the  foreign 
criticisms  on  Burns  by  people  who  can  read  English, 
but  who  only  know  the  dialect  of  Burns,  as  I  do, 
through  a  glossary.  And  what  knowledge  of  a 
dialect  can  we  gain  through  a  glossary,  or  even 
through  a  dictionary?  How  can  we  learn  the 
clusters  of  associations,  the  delicate  shades  of  feel- 
ing which  cling  about  words  familiar  to  the  poet 
from  childhood,  and  which  determine  both  the 
beauty  and  propriety  of  their  use  ?  So  then,  to 
the  great  body  of  English-speaking  people.  Burns 
as  a  great  poet  is  inaccessible.      How  much  more 


Thoughts  on  Style  27 

to  foreigners  ?  And  for  the  same  reason  Goethe's 
Faust,  or  the  lyrics  of  V.  Hugo,  are  by  us  only  very 
imperfectly  understood.  Of  course  the  same  may 
be  said  of  our  appreciation  of  Sophocles  and  Virgil, 
who  would  laugh  their  sides  sore  at  our  Babu 
verses  in  their  language.  But  then  in  dead  lan- 
guages no  better  knowledge  is  now  to  be  had.  In 
the  living  we  should  perhaps  be  content  with 
native  judgments.  I  have  even  heard  it  said  by  a 
great  linguist  that  no  man  really  knows  more  than 
one  language — and  most  men  not  even  that.  But 
what  a  blow  to  all  our  critical  literature  and  our 
fancied  appreciation  of  the  great  masterpieces  of 
many  languages !  These  considerations  are  so 
humiliating  that  I  feel  disposed  to  apologise  for 
bringing  them  forward. 


V 

'THE  ADVENTURES  OF  CHERUBINA ' 

BY  AUSTIN   DOBSON 

WHEN  the  first  editor  of  the  Quarterly 
reported  to  John  Murray,  by  request, 
upon  Miss  Austen's  'Pride  and  Prejudice,'  he 
commended  it  chiefly  for  the  absence  of  certain 
then-popular  features.  There  were,  he  said,  '  no 
dark  passages,  no  secret  chambers,  no  wind-howl- 
ings  in  long  galleries,  no  drops  of  blood  upon 
a  rusty  dagger' — things  which,  in  Mr  Gififord's 
opinion,  'should  be  left  to  ladies'  maids  and 
sentimental  washerwomen.'  That  he  failed  to 
discover  in  Miss  Austen  the  characteristics  of 
Mrs  Radcliffe  is  not  extraordinary ;  nor  to  any 
fervent  '  Janite '  (to  use  Professor  Saintsbury's 
word)  will  it  seem  strange  that  he  should  declare 
'  Pride  and  Prejudice '  to  be  '  really  a  very  pretty 
thing.'  But  it  is  assuredly  worth  noting  that  Miss 
Austen,  so  far  from  following  the  author  of  the 
'  Italian '  and  the  '  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,'  had 
actually  already  composed  a  book  to  ridicule  that 


30  Among  My  Books 

gifted  writer — the  MS.  of  which  book,  *  Northanger 
Abbey,'  to  wit,  when  Gifford  wrote  to  Murray,  was 
temporarily  interred  in  a  publisher's  drawer  at 
Bath.  It  is,  besides,  curious  that,  notwithstanding 
the  vexatious  suppression  of  her  own  finely-touched 
little  satire.  Miss  Austen  should,  in  her  correspond- 
ence, be  generous  enough  to  praise  warmly  another 
work  which  was  also  devoted  to  making  fun  of  Mrs 
Radcliffe.  '  I  finished  the  "  Heroine  "  last  night  '— 
she  writes  to  her  sister  Cassandra  while  on  her  way 
to  London  to  publish  *  Mansfield  Park ' — '  and  was 
very  much  amused  by  it.  ...  It  diverted  me  ex- 
ceedingly.' Later  in  the  same  letter  she  adds — '  I 
have  torn  through  the  third  vol.  of  the  "  Heroine." 
I  do  not  think  it  falls  off.  It  is  a  delightful  bur- 
lesque, particularly  on  the  Radcliffe  style.'  This  is 
'  praise  from  Sir  Hubert  Stanley,'  and  fully  justifies 
us  in  taking  down  the  volumes  to  be  dusted. 

Although  occasionally  to  be  discovered  among 
those  bouquins  de  rebut  achctes  au  rabais  of  which 
De  Musset  writes,  copies  of  the  'Heroine'  are 
certainly  not  common,  and  may  even  be  termed 
rare.  The  author's  name,  which,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, Miss  Austen  does  not  mention,  was  Eaton 
Stannard  Barrett,  further  described  on  his  title- 
page  as  'Esquire.'  Born  at  Cork  in  1786,  Barrett 
was  educated  at  Wandsworth,  and  afterwards 
entered  the  Middle  Temple.  But  he  seems  never 
to  have  practised  at  the  Bar,  and  he  died  prema- 
turely of  consumption  in  Wales.  He  made  several 
incursions  into  literature.     He  wrote  a  comedy  ;  he 


'  The  Adventures  of  Cherubina  '      3 1 

wrote  political  satires  against  the  Whigs  of  his  day, 
of  which  one,  '  All  the  Talents,'  obtained  some  con- 
temporary reputation  ;  and  he  wrote  a  Popesque 
eulogy  on  '  Woman,'  four  lines  of  which  periodi- 
cally,  and   not   undeservedly,   figure    among    the 

*  Quotations  Wanted  '  of  literary  journals.  '  Not 
she,'  he  says  of  his  subject, 

'  Not  she  with  trait'rous  kiss  her  Saviour  stung, 
Not  she  denied  Him  with  unholy  tongue  ; 
She,  while  Apostles  shrank,  could  dangers  brave, 
Last  at  His  cross  and  earliest  at  His  grave.' 

Finally,  in  addition  to  a  novel  called  '  Six  Weeks 
at  Long's,'  he  wrote  the  '  mock  Romance '  of  which 
the  full  title  is  *The  Heroine,  or  Adventures  of 
Cherubina.'  It  was  published  in  18 13  by  Henry 
Colburn,  was  dedicated  to  the  Right  Hon.  George 
Canning,  and  bore  for  motto  '  L'Histoire  d'une 
femme  est  toujours  un  Roman.' 

The  idea  of  burlesquing  or  satirising  current 
forms  of  fiction  was  obviously  not  a  new  one. 
Without  going  back  even  as  far  as  Mrs  Lenox  and 
the  *  Female  Quixote,'  only  a  short  time  before  the 

*  Heroine '  appeared,  Miss  Charlton  had  essayed 
something  of  the  kind  in  her  '  Rosella,'  and  Mrs 
Green  had  put  forth  her  *  Romance  Readers  and 
Romance  Writers.'  But  Barrett,  as  fits  a  male, 
comes  to  closer  quarters  with  his  theme.  Miss 
Cherry  Wilkinson,  whose  adventures  he  relates,  is 
the  only  daughter  of  a  farmer  who,  by  '  honest  and 
disgusting  industry,'  has  acquired — what  he  could 


32  Among  My  Books 

scarcely  acquire  now  —  a  considerable  fortune. 
Cherry's  governess,  who  has  been  discharged  for 
misconduct,  and  who  has  stuffed  her  pupil  with 
romances,  easily  persuades  her  that  she  is  a  '  child 
of  mystery.'  Thereupon  Miss  Wilkinson  discovers 
— with  the  aid  of  an  old  indenture — that  her  real 
name  is,  or  should  be,  Cherubina  De  Willoughby, 
and  that  she  is  called  to  the  career  of  a  Heroine. 
For  this  she  has  already  certain  indispensable  physi- 
cal qualifications.  Although  but  fifteen  she  is  tall 
and  '  aerial,'  her  hair  is  flaxen,  her  face  Grecian, 
and  her  eyes  blue  and  sleepy.  She  has  also, 
according  to  one  of  her  admirers,  '  a  voice  soft  as 
a  Creolian  lyre.'  Further,  she  is  an  adept  in  most 
of  the  other  requisites.  She  can  *  blush  to  the  tips 
of  her  fingers '  ;  faint  at  pleasure  ;  has  tears,  sighs, 
and  half-sighs  at  command  ;  is  mistress  of  the 
entire  gamut  of  smiles,  from  fragmentary  to  fatal, 
and  is  fully  skilled  in  the  arts  of  gliding,  tripping, 
flitting,  and  tottering,  which  last,  being  the  'ap- 
proach movement  of  heroic  distress,'  is  the  heroine's 
ne  phis  ultra.  She  is  also  fully  posted  in  the 
obligations  of  a  heroine  to  'live  a  month  on  a 
mouthful,'  to  accomplish  long  journeys  without 
fatigue,  and  to  obtain  the  necessaries  of  life  without 
the  tedious  formalities  of  payment.  Finding  she  is 
threatened  with  an  old  playfellow,  one  Stuart,  as  a 
suitor,  she  resolves  to  fly  from  her  father's  house. 
This  she  does,  on  a  stormy  night,  taking  with  her, 
in  'a  small  band-box,'  her  jewels,  her  'spangled 
muslin'  (the  regulation  costume  of  heroines),  her 


'The  Adventures  of  Cherubina'     33 

satin  petticoat,  her  silk  stockings,  and  her  satin 
shoes. 

From  this  point  to  the  end  of  Volume  Three 
Cherubina  *  crowds  and  hurries  and  precipitates ' 
her  remarkable  adventures.  At  the  outset  she 
saves  her  would-be  suitor  Stuart  from  robbers,  an 
act  which  constitutes  him  her  convenient  protector 
through  the  book  whenever  her  vagaries  make  a 
deus  ex  machina  imperative.  Then  she  takes  coach 
to  London,  meeting  on  the  road  one  Betterton, 
whose  intentions  are  not  honourable.  Escaping 
from  him  she  falls  in  with  a  St  Giles'  woollen- 
draper  named  Jerry  Sullivan,  whose  womankind 
naturally  distrust  the  spangled  '  child  of  mystery.' 
So  she  takes  refuge  in  a  Baronial  Castle,  which 
turns  out  to  be  Covent  Garden  Theatre,  where  she 
meets  an  actor  named  Abraham  Grundy,  whose 
dramatic  appellation  of  Lord  Altamont  Mortimer 
Montmorenci,  and  habit  of  acting  (like  John 
Kemble)  both  on  and  off  the  stage,  exactly  suit  her 
cadre.  He  carries  her  to  his  lodgings,  where  also 
resides  a  half-crazy  poet,  whose  poems  are  still 
unpublished,  but  who  has  written  a  biography  of 
himself  to  precede  them,  which  is  a  creditable 
parody  on  Johnson.  Her  father,  following  her,  is 
promptly  hustled  by  Montmorenci  into  a  private 
madhouse ;  and  Betterton  (whose  nefarious  pur- 
poses are  always  foiled  by  her  good  angel  Stuart) 
persuades  her  that  she  is  entitled  to  the  property 
of  a  certain  Lady  Gwyn.  To  Lady  Gwyn's,  there- 
fore, Cherubina  repairs,  by  this  time  attired  in  a 

C 


34  Among  My  Books 

Tuscan  masquerade  dress,  modelled  upon  Mrs 
Radcliffe.  Lady  Gwyn,  at  first  regarding  her  as 
mad,  afterwards  retains  her  to  divert  her  friends. 
Failing  to  oust  Lady  Gwyn,  she  endeavours  to 
establish  herself  on  a  feudal  footing  in  a  neigh- 
bouring ruin  called  Monkton  Castle,  with  Sullivan 
as  warden,  Higginson  (the  crazy  poet)  as  minstrel, 
and  a  body  of  haymakers,  at  so  much  per  diem^  as 
vassals.  After  doing  a  good  deal  of  mischief,  and 
going  through  a  tangle  of  fantastic  experiences, 
some  of  which,  in  a  Gothic  chamber,  remind  one  of 
those  of  Catharine  Morland,  she  comes  to  her 
senses.  Her  father  is  set  free ;  and  Stuart,  indul- 
gently admitting  that  *  her  principles  have  been  a 
little  perverted  by  the  influence  of  the  native 
novel,'  delivers  himself  of  a  discourse  on  fiction, 
which,  although  no  burlesque,  is  not  the  less 
edifying.  Upon  romances  he  is  extremely  hard  ; 
they  are  dangerous  stimulants  to  the  imagination, 
which  first  elevate  and  then  enervate.  Sentimental 
novels  are  not  much  better,  but  he  excepts  among 
these  latter, '  Rasselas '  and  *  The  Misanthropist '  (?). 
He  advises  Cherubina,  as  a  remedial  measure,  *  to 
mix  much  in  the  world,  and  learn  the  customs  of 
actual,  not  ideal  society.'  '  I  now,'  says  that  re- 
formed young  person,  winding  up  her  correspond- 
ence (the  book,  it  should  be  stated,  is  in  the  '  episto- 
lary style '  which  Fielding  condemned),  ^  pass  my 
time  both  usefully  and  agreeably.  Morality,  history, 
languages,  and  music  occupy  my  mornings,  and 
my  evenings  are  enlivened  by  balls,  operas,  and 


'The  Adventures  of  Cherubina  '     35 

familiar  parties.'  But,  she  adds,  after  referring  to 
the  good  counsels  of  her  companion  Stuart,  whom 
she  of  course  eventually  marries,  *  I  still  retain  some 
taints  of  my  former  follies  and  affectations.  My 
postures  are  sometimes  too  picturesque  ;  my  phrases 
too  flowery  ;  and  my  sentiments  too  exotic' 

The  above  is  but  a  rapid  and  imperfect  sum- 
mary of  an  undoubtedly  clever  book,  although  the 
modern  reader,  especially  if  he  be  averse  from 
burlesque,  will  probably  conclude  that  Miss  Austen 
was  rather  easily  '  diverted.'  He  will,  however,  do 
well  to  bear  in  mind  that,  while  its  light-hearted 
parody  of  *  Caroline  de  Lichtfield,'  the  *  Beggar 
Girl,'  the  '  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,'  the  *  Children  of 
the  Abbey,'  and  the  rest,  is  now  hopelessly  ob- 
scure to  us,  it  was  abundantly  perceptible  to  that 
accomplished  student  of  'follies  and  nonsense, 
whims  and  inconsistencies,'  the  author  of  *  North- 
anger  Abbey.' 


VI 

PERISHABLE  BOOKS 
BY  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

A  SPEAKER  at  the  recent  conference  of 
librarians  complained  that  most  modern 
books  were  doomed  to  speedy  destruction,  not  in 
the  spiritual  but  in  the  material  sense.  The  paper 
on  which  they  are  printed  will  rapidly  become 
mere  pulp  or  impalpable  powder.  One  might 
have  supposed  that  such  a  result  would  be  grati- 
fying, especially  to  librarians.  Considering  what 
a  vast  proportion  of  printed  matter  not  only  is, 
but  is  intended  to  be,  purely  ephemeral,  there 
could,  at  first  sight,  be  no  reason  for  desiring  its 
preservation.  The  regret,  perhaps,  is  an  instance 
of  a  tendency  noted  by  all  psychologists.  A 
pursuit  becomes  delightful  for  its  own  sake,  even 
when  its  ostensible  end  ceases  to  be  valuable. 
A  zealous  librarian  takes  such  a  pleasure  in 
preserving  literature  that  he  forgets  to  consider 
whether  the  stores  accumulated  can  be  of  any 
use,  and  then  to  enquire  whether  useless  stores  are 
not  positively  pernicious.  Persons  who  are  not 
subject  to  that  illusion  may  take  a  different  view. 


38  Among  My  Books 

Why  should  not  all  books  be  made  of  perishable 
materials  ?  Hawthorne  somewhere  argues  that 
when  we  have  become  civilised  we  shall  again  give 
up  houses  for  tents.  Why  encumber  ourselves 
with  huge  masses  of  bricks  and  mortar,  which,  if 
they  suit  the  convenience  of  one  generation,  are  all 
the  more  likely  to  be  ill  suited  to  its  successors  ? 
Why,  on  the  same  principle,  should  we  try  to 
carry  with  us  vast  accumulations  of  printed  matter 
which  have  served  their  only  possible  purpose? 
Would  it  not  be  a  good  thing  if  a  law  were  made 
that  no  paper  should  be  used  which  was  not  war- 
ranted to  vanish  (say)  in  a  century?  Domestic 
life  now  involves  a  continuous  struggle  against  the 
masses  of  waste  paper,  circulars  and  advertisements, 
which  pour  In  by  every  post ;  and  but  for  a  sys- 
tematic destruction  would  cause  a  household  to  be 
snowed  up  as  under  a  paper  avalanche.  The  race 
at  large  is  suffering  in  the  same  way ;  and  some 
mode  of  self-defence  is  becoming  absolutely  neces- 
sary. The  legislation  we  have  suggested  would 
provide  an  automatic  machinery  which  would 
become  operative  at  the  end  of  the  twentieth 
century.  From  that  time  forth  no  book  would  be 
in  existence  which  would  have  been  printed  more 
than  a  hundred  years,  and  room  would  be  con- 
stantly made  for  a  new  influx  by  the  spontaneous 
vanishing  of  rubbish. 

It  would  not  follow  that  all  literature  above  a 
century  old  should  perish.  It  would  simply  be 
that  books  not  reprinted  for  a  century  would  vanish. 


Perishable  Books  39 

All  the  great  books,  the  models  and  masterpieces 
of  literature,  would  be  preserved  ;  and  there  would, 
we  may  suppose,  be  a  constant  watchfulness  over 
books  which  were  approaching  the  fatal  term. 
The  effect  would  be  like  that  of  cremation.  We 
should  destroy  what  is  really  dead  instead  of  pre- 
serving mere  mummies.  The  literature  actually 
preserved  would  be  mainly  such  as  had  some  primd 
facie  claim  to  the  title  of  classical.  We  are  often 
exhorted  to  limit  our  reading  to  really  good  books. 
That  is  obviously  impossible,  if  we  are  to  know 
anything  of  our  contemporaries ;  but  it  seems  to 
be  a  sound  rule  for  the  study  of  older  literature. 
Shakespeare  is  worth  reading ;  but  the  only  real 
use  of  plunging  into  the  enormous  rubbish  heaps  of 
the  small  Elizabethan  literature  is  to  glorify  the 
Dry-as-dusts  who  won't  recognise  the  inevitable 
law  of  death.  The  advantages  are  obvious  in  the 
case  of  history.  A  book  which  shall  be  a  great 
work  of  art  as  well  as  an  accurate  record  is  now 
scarcely  possible.  The  improvement  of  modern 
history  is  a  familiar  topic  ;  and  in  certain  respects 
is  undeniable.  But  it  is  permissible  to  doubt 
whether  modern  historians  would  not  be  better  if 
great  masses  of  records  had  been  summarily  de- 
stroyed. The  examination  of  all  manner  of 
archives  and  State  paper  offices  has,  it  is  true, 
enabled  recent  inquirers  to  give  elaborate  accounts 
of  the  various  purposes  and  impressions  of  States- 
men from  day  to  day.  If  history  is  understood  as 
implying  an  exact  knowledge  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 


40  Among  My  Books 

intentions  as  to  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  at  any- 
given  date  the  records  have  been  invaluable.  But 
even  in  the  hands  of  a  great  literary  artist  like 
Froude,  history  written  on  this  scheme  often 
becomes  wearisome,  because  we  feel  that  the 
minute  personal  questions  are  both  insoluble  and 
irrelevant.  The  broad  and  really  important  facts 
are  obscured  by  the  supposed  necessity  of  going 
into  minute  biography.  Imagine  a  history  of  the 
present  day  written  on  the  scale  adopted  for 
periods  when  documents  were  comparatively  rare, 
and  the  unfortunate  historian  bound  to  be  familiar 
with  all  the  views  of  Mr  Gladstone  and  Lord 
Salisbury  and  all  their  subordinates,  to  read  all  the 
private  letters,  and  all  the  despatches,  and  all  the 
Blue-books,  and  all  the  statistical  tables,  to  make 
up  his  mind  about  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  the 
labour  question,  and  the  education  question,  and 
the  rights  of  our  policy  in  Egypt  and  India — any 
one  of  which  is  enough  to  occupy  the  whole  time 
of  a  contemporary.  If  it  takes  Mr  Gardiner  a  year 
to  write  the  history  of  a  year  at  Cromwell's  time,  it 
will  hereafter  take  a  lifetime  to  write  of  a  year 
under  Queen  Victoria.  History  on  such  a  scale  is 
plainly  impossible ;  and  it  is  every  day  becoming 
more  essential  to  tabulate,  classify,  prepare  indexes, 
and  in  one  way  or  other  to  organise  the  vast 
masses  of  information  which  are  accumulating 
more  and  more  rapidly.  The  unhappy  historian  in 
the  future  will  be  physically  unable  to  go  into  a 
hundredth  part  of  the  available  sources  of  informa- 


Perishable  Books  41 

tion.  He  must  constantly  be  content  with  sum- 
maries without  trying  to  go  behind  them  ;  and  it  is 
desirable  that  the  burthen  should  be  lightened  by 
destroying  what  is  plainly  useless.  We  seem  to 
be  making  such  a  mistake  as  a  collector  of  a 
museum  of  natural  history,  who  should  not  be 
content  with  getting  examples  of  every  species,  but 
should  try  to  keep  every  example  he  could  of  each 
species.  The  historian  is  constantly  tempted  to 
waste  time  by  ascertaining  facts,  not  because  every- 
body supposes  that  they  can  throw  any  more  light 
upon  any  serious  question,  but  simply  because  they 
are  ascertainable.  He  can  only  refuse  on  peril  of 
being  denounced  as  superficial  by  somebody  who 
spends  his  whole  energy  upon  the  minute  details 
which  are  really  without  any  significance.  The 
historian  will  clearly  have  to  abandon  the  pretence 
of  omniscience ;  but  he  should  be  freed  from  the 
temptation  of  pretending  to  it  by  destroying  the 
worthless  records,  which,  so  long  as  they  exist, 
make  constant  calls  upon  his  attention.  After  all, 
a  vast  mass  of  knowledge  is  valueless  ;  it  could  be 
destroyed  without  really  altering  our  judgment  of 
any  important  point,  and  if  we  here  and  there 
destroyed  something  .which  might  be  of  some  use, 
we  should  get  a  greater  advantage  by  making  the 
waste  of  time  upon  such  investigations  once  for  all 
impossible. 

The  argument  applies  even  more  clearly  to  pure 
literature.  How  much  of  all  the  writing  intended 
for  ephemeral  amusement  is  really  worth  the  space 


42  Among  My  Books 

it  occupies  on  the  shelves  of  the  British  Museum? 
Look  at  any  collection  of  British  poets.  Say 
honestly  what  proportion  of  it  does  any  good  to 
any  human  being.  The  old  rule  as  to  medioc- 
rity in  poetry  gives  the  principle.  A  tenth-rate 
historian  may  add  something  to  our  knowledge  of 
fact;  but  a  tenth-rate  poet  does  nothing  whatever. 
He  is  simply  an  inferior  echo  of  something  better, 
and  the  original  is  enough  for  all  our  purposes. 
Would  anybody  suffer  if  Blackmore's  '  Creation '  or 
Boyse's  *  Deity '  had  calmly  and  quietly  vanished 
away  ?  Will  our  grandchildren  have  any  cause  for 
sorrow  if  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  all  the  publica- 
tions of  to-day  should  disappear  like  a  bad  dream  ? 
To  keep  such  things,  it  may  be  said,  is  a  harmless 
superstition.  They  may  be  stowed  away  in  boxes 
and  do  no  injury  to  anyone.  There  is,  however, 
some  harm  to  libraries,  as  every  one  knows  who 
has  anything  to  do  with  the  accumulating  matters 
which  are  always  overpowering  the  energies  of 
their  guardians.  But  the  bare  existence  of  such 
repositories  discourages  and  overwhelms  conscien- 
tious readers.  They  are  haunted  by  the  vague  im- 
pression that  they  ought  to  read  everything,  and 
forget  that  the  more  rubbish  they  study  the  less 
energy  they  have  for  what  is  good.  And  surely 
the  honest  writer  of  such  stuff  may  feel  the  same. 
He  writes  an  article  to  amuse  his  neighbours  for  a 
few  minutes.  He  has  nothing  whatever  to  say  to 
posterity.  When  he  writes  a  letter  to  a  friend  he 
means  it  for  the  waste-paper  basket.      When  he 


Perishable  Books  43 

addresses  the  public,  he  means  the  public  of  his 
own  period,  and  should  feel  it  to  be  an  impertin- 
ence if  he  is  forced  to  present  himself  to  the  future 
race  without  any  intention  of  his  own.  We  are, 
as  has  sometimes  been  remarked,  ephemeral  beings, 
and  ought  to  behave  as  such.  Why  should  we  be 
forced  to  be  immortal?  We  should  be  content, 
and  even  eager,  to  pass  into  oblivion  as  soon  as 
the  temporary  purpose  of  amusing  an  idle  hour 
has  been  fulfilled.  A  writer  who  feels  that 
strongly — of  course  we  do  not  speak  to  the  Heaven- 
born  genius — should  insist,  if  he  could,  upon 
having  his  work  printed  upon  perishable  materials. 
Immortality  in  print  is  not  only  a  superfluity ;  the 
bare  suggestion  of  its  possibility  is  a  positive  injury 
to  one's  feelings. 


VII 

ON  CERTAIN  DEFECTS  IN   MODERN 
CRITICISM 

BY  'A' 

IT  is  as  much  in  the  interest  of  the  readers  of 
the  present  day  as  in  that  of  the  writers  that 
I  would  plead  with  certain  of  our  literary  reviewers 
for  some  modification  in  the  scale  and  language  of 
criticism  adopted  by  them  in  dealing  with  new  pub- 
lications. For  I  assume  that  the  primary  purpose 
of  a  review  is  to  guide  the  reader  as  to  the  new 
publications  which  are  likely  to  interest  and  attract 
him. 

Speaking  for  myself,  and,  I  should  suppose,  for 
most  others,  when  I  take  up  a  periodical  journal  or 
review  devoted  to  criticism,  my  first  object  is  to  see 
what  books  of  value  and  merit  have  been  lately 
given  to  the  world.  The  review  may  not  be  able 
to  afford  space  for  long  extracts  from  any  such 
work  dealt  with,  and  we  are  therefore  left  entirely 
dependent  on  the  taste  and  judgment  of  the  critic. 
And  in  this  matter  it  is  evident  that  a  great  change 
has  of  late  come  over  the  disposition  of  the  average 


46  Among  My  Books 

critic.  Forty  years  ago,  and  longer,  it  was  the 
common  and  just  complaint  that  reviewers  sacri- 
ficed too  much  to  the  pleasure  (a  very  seductive 
one)  of  tossing  and  goring  the  author  under  review. 
The  old  Quarterlies  and  the  Saturday  Review^ 
under  its  original  management,  for  instance,  had 
the  reputation  of  being  too  severe.  It  was  com- 
monly supposed  that  political  enmities,  artistic 
differences  of  opinion,  opposing  historical  schools, 
and  the  like,  were  allowed  to  enter  into  the  region 
of  literary  criticism,  and  to  deflect  it  sorely  from 
the  path  of  pure  and  impartial  judgment.  There 
may  be  something  of  this  still  left  among  us, 
but  by  far  the  most  startling  feature  of  modern 
reviewing  is  not  its  harshness,  its  scorn,  its  implac- 
ability, but  rather  its  universal  indulgence,  and  its 
indiscriminate  and  excessive  language  of  eulogy. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  glance  down  the  advertis- 
ing columns  of  a  literary  journal,  in  which  pub- 
lishers attach  *  Notices  of  the  Press '  to  the  books 
they  announce,  to  be  struck  by  this  fact.  Words 
and  terms,  once  upon  a  time  reserved  only  for  the 
great  masters  of  literature,  for  the  great  classics  of 
the  language,  seem  to  be  now  sprinkled  freely,  with 
no  sense  of  their  incongruity,  over  any  and  every 
new  work  of  fiction  that  may  appear.  The  term 
*  genius,'  for  example,  which  was  once  held  as  it 
were  a  sacred  appellation  to  be  conferred  on  the 
Dt  Majores  of  our  literature,  is  now  so  common  as 
to  have  lost  any  significance  whatever.  I  noted  it 
three  times  last  week  in  the  advertisements  of  a 


Defects  in  Modern  Criticism       47 

single  publisher,  applied  to  some  recent  works  of 
fiction.  As  for  lesser  terms  of  praise,  *  unique,' 
*  unsurpassed,'  '  first-rate,'  '  intensely  human,' 
'  quivering  and  palpitating  with  passion,' — these, 
I  need  not  say,  appear  week  after  week  as  plentiful 
as  blackberries. 

It  is  therefore  of  a  certain  lack  of  moderation 
and  discrimination  that  I  complain  as  unfair  to  the 
reader  who  comes  to  the  critic  for  guidance.  He 
wants  to  know,  in  the  first  instance,  which  new 
books  are  of  high  excellence,  which  of  a  moderate 
merit,  and  which  are  to  be  avoided  as  worthless. 
Too  often  he  reads  reviews  which  seem  to  speak  of 
all  alike  in  language  which  used  once,  as  I  have 
said,  to  be  restricted  to  the  masterpieces  of  our 
literature.  We  all  know  the  story  of  the  little 
child,  who,  reading  epitaph  after  epitaph  in  the 
churchyard,  inquired  with  some  surprise  of  its 
parent  *  where  all  the  wicked  people  were  buried.' 
An  unsophisticated  stranger  after  reading  review 
after  review  of  modern  works  of  fiction  might  well 
ask  where  all  the  worthless  novels  were  interred. 
It  is  our  sense  of  proportion  that  is  offended  when 
praise  is  universal.  We  long  at  last  for  some 
rough-and-ready  measure  of  distinction.  A  grad- 
uated scale,  numbered  for  reference,  as  thus  : — (i) 
First-rate,  (2)  Good,  (3)  Good,  but  not  good  enough, 
(4)  Very  fair,  (5)  Fair,  (6)  Mediocre,  (7)  Poor  stuff, 
(8)  Pretentious  trash,  (9)  Sensational  rubbish,  (10) 
Drivel — would  at  least  indicate  an  attempt  at 
classification,  though  it  did  not  provide  elaborate 


48  Among  My  Books 

reasons  for  the  judgment  given.  But  if  the  critic's 
judgment  by  classification  were  sound,  it  would  be 
a  great  saving  of  trouble.  The  method  might  be 
crude  and  inartistic,  and  would  not  even  make 
copy.  But  the  reader,  supposing  the  classification 
to  be  reasonably  just,  would  at  least  be  nearer  than 
he  is  at  present  to  knowing  what  to  expect  from 
the  book  noticed.  The  original  prospectus  of  this 
present  journal  included  the  perfectly  just  remark, 
that  indiscriminate  praise  encourages  the  produc- 
tion of  much  inferior  literary  work.  There  is 
nothing  new,  of  course,  in  the  observation,  but  it  is 
not  for  that  reason  superfluous  to  repeat  it.  The 
old  motto  of  the  Edinburgh  Review^  taken  from 
Publius  Syrus — an  author,  said  Sydney  Smith, 
whom  none  of  us  had  read — 'Judex  damnatur 
quum  nocens  absolvitur,'  contains  the  whole  moral 
in  a  nut-shell. 

This  is  an  age  when  the  manufacture  of  books 
has  reached  a  pitch  unknown  to  any  other  period 
of  our  literature.  The  marked  increase  in  the 
number  of  publishers  in  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  goes  to  show  it.  But  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether  the  multiplication  of  books  ac- 
counts for  the  multiplication  of  publishers,  or  vice 
versa.  The  unprecedented  range  of  topics  chosen 
— as  if  the  British  Museum  had  been  (to  borrow 
the  expressive  simile  of  Lord  Tennyson's  Lin- 
colnshire friend)  '  raked  out  with  a  small-tooth 
comb '  to  find  something  new  that  will  form 
an  attractive   title  —  forces  one    to    suspect    that 


Defects  in  Modern  Criticism       49 

the  genesis  of  many  new  works  must  be  of  this 
sort.  And  the  strange  thing,  as  it  strikes  the 
ignorant  outsider,  is  this — that  the  vaster  the 
annual  crop  of  books,  the  more  lenient,  the  less 
exacting,  the  critic  appears  to  become.  He  seems 
to  smile,  with  all-embracing  benevolence,  upon  all ! 
And  this,  I  repeat,  may  be  fun  for  the  critic — and 
for  the  author — but  how  about  the  poor  reader  of 
the  review,  who  is  on  the  look  out  for  suggestion 
and  guidance  ? 

And  if  there  is  this  ground  for  the  plaint  that  I 
am  pouring  forth,  is  there  not  another,  of  even  more 
importance  ?  Even  the  critics  who  have  long  erred 
on  the  side  of  excessive  laudation  are  startled  at 
last  by  the  signs  of  a  public  standard  of  taste 
against  which  they  are  warring  in  vain.  Certain 
novels  of  to-day,  which  need  not  be  named,  but 
which  will  occur  to  every  one,  selling  by  the 
hundred  thousand  —  full  of  false  humour,  false 
philosophy,  false  pathos,  and  the  most  mon- 
strous pictures  of  life,  such  books  have  at  last 
awakened  certain  critics  to  the  forgotten  responsi- 
bilities of  criticism.  A  few,  no  doubt,  still  take 
sides  with  the  myriad  purchasers — and  boldly  heap 
upon  these  works  of  fiction  every  epithet  of  praise 
that  they  can  summon.  But  the  majority,  to  do 
them  justice,  have,  like  the  fabled  worm,  *  turned  at 
last'  But  it  is  too  late.  The  admirers  of  these 
productions  no  longer  care  for  the  critic !  The 
more  their  favourite  romances  are  abused,  the 
more  fondly  they   cling    to   them.      Yet    I    must 

D 


50  Among  My  Books 

put  in  a  word  for  such  as  these.  Are  they  so  much 
to  be  scorned,  as  we  in  our  haste  may  think  ?  Are 
they  not  showing,  in  part,  simply  the  fruits  of  a  de- 
fective education  ?  Have  they  not  been  too  often 
allowed,  by  their  educators,  to  mistake  the  sham 
for  the  reality  ?  The  critic  cannot,  it  is  true, 
neutralise  the  natural  bias  of  any  reader  towards 
what  is  fifth-rate.  But  I  submit  that  he  might 
have  done  more  than  he  has  in  this  direction. 


VIII 
ADDISON'S  TRAVELS 

BY  EDMUND  GOSSE 

IN  spite  of  the  increase  of  intercommunication 
between  England  and  the  Continent,  books 
of  European  travel  of  any  practical  merit  were  curi- 
ously rare  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
It  is  difficult  to  see  what  guides  there  were  for  a 
smart  young  gentleman  just  setting  out  on  the 
Grand  Tour  in  1699.  If  he  had  a  turn  for  science, 
he  might  take  with  him  the  ponderous  '  Observa- 
tions '  which  John  Ray,  the  naturalist,  had  published 
in  1673  ;  a  little  more  up  to  date  were  those  dis- 
quisitions concerning  political  geography  which 
Gilbert  Burnet  called  his  Travels  in  Italy  and 
Switzerland.  But  this  was  practically  all ;  and  we 
must  take  this  dearth  into  consideration  when  we 
judge  a  volume  like  Addison's  '  Remarks  on  Several 
Parts  of  Italy,  etc,,'  which  has  unkindly,  and,  indeed, 
unfairly,  been  called  a  book  of  travels  which  might 
have  been  written  at  home.  It  is  just  because  in 
1699  there  were  no  materials  at  home  from  which 


52  Among  My  Books 

it  could  be  written  that  its  interest,  if  not  very 
exciting,  is  permanent. 

The  elegant  and  youthful  traveller  was  far  from 
being  celebrated  when  this  tour  in  Italy  and 
Switzerland  was  taken.  Joseph  Addison  had 
recently  been  confirmed  in  a  Fellowship  at 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford  ;  he  had  written  some- 
what unimportant  copies  of  verses  in  Latin  and 
English ;  he  was  projecting  a  translation  of 
Herodotus,  and  nibbling  here  and  there  at  Ovid. 
But  Charles  Montague  had  fixed  his  eye  upon 
him,  had  extracted  him  from  his  shell  in  Oxford, 
and  had  persuaded  Lord  Somers  to  grant  him  a 
crown  pension  of  ;£"300  a  year  on  which  to  prepare 
for  politics  by  foreign  travel.  Accordingly,  Addison 
loitered  only  long  enough  to  get  his  Latin  poems 
addressed  to  Montague  printed  in  the  '  Musse 
Anglicanae,'  as  letters  of  introduction  to  Con- 
tinental scholarship  ;  and  early  in  1699  he  started. 
Of  his  adventures  in  France  the  book  before  us 
says  nothing  ;  we  know  that  a  gift  of  the  '  Musae '  to 
Boileau  gave  that  potentate  of  letters  *  a  very  new 
idea  of  the  English  politeness.'  But  on  the  12th 
of  December,  1699,  Addison  started  on  board  a 
*  tartane '  from  Marseilles  bound  for  Genoa,  and  he 
did  not  return  to  England  until  1703.  Edward 
Wortley  Montagu  was  with  him,  but  Addison 
does  not  refer  to  him  or  to  any  companion. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  elder  Mr  Shandy, 
long  inconsolable  for  the  loss  of  Bobby,  was  cheered 
by  recollecting  how  many  things  referring  to  such 


Addison's  Travels  53 

a  bereavement  could  be  collected  from  the  Classics. 
Before  starting  for  Italy,  Addison  filled  a  common- 
place-book with  passages  from  the  Latin  poets 
descriptive  of  scenes  which  he  was  likely  to  en- 
counter, and  he  translated  them  as  neatly  as  he 
could  into  English  verse  of  the  quality  of  Waller. 
These  quotations,  printed  at  the  proper  points  in 
large  type,  occupy  a  great  deal  of  room,  and  help 
to  explain  the  fact  that  the  book,  although  it  has 
not  very  much  substance  in  it,  runs  to  the  com- 
paratively handsome  figure  of  534  pages.  It  was 
not  published  until  1705,  that  is  to  say,  not  until 
the  sudden  success  of  '  The  Campaign '  had  made 
the  author  famous.  The  title-page  was  anonymous, 
but  the  interesting  dedication  to  Lord  Somers  was 
signed,  and  no  secret  was  made  of  the  authorship. 
The  course  the  young  traveller  pursued  ran  from 
Genoa,  through  Pavia  and  Milan  to  Venice,  then 
down  to  Ferrara  and  Rimini,  and  so,  zigzagging 
across  the  Apennines,  to  Rome  and  Naples.  He 
was  perhaps  the  first  Englishman  to  recognise  the 
singular  coziness  of  San  Remo,  and  to  smile  at  the 
pomposity  of  the  principalit}/  of  Monaco,  where  an 
ofificer  remarked  to  him,  'with  a  great  deal  of 
Gravity,  that  his  Master  and  the  King  of  France, 
amidst  all  the  Confusions  of  Europe,  had  ever  been 
good  Friends  and  Allies.'  But  the  minute  political 
sub-divisions  of  Italy  itself  were  so  far  from  scandal- 
ising Addison,  that  he  notes  an  opinion  that  the 
geographical  forms  of  that  Peninsula  predispose  it 
to  the  formation  of  a  large  number  of  independent 


54  Among  My  Books 

States.  Venice  greatly  entertained  him,  yet  his 
descriptions  of  it  are  frigid  ;  the  colourless  purity 
of  Addison's  style  at  this  period  scarcely  lends 
itself  to  the  picturesque.  He  is  much  more  his 
future  self  in  little  touches  of  ironical  observation 
or  humorous  reflection  which  remind  us  of  the 
Spectator  of  twelve  years  hence ;  as,  for  instance, 
when,  at  a  Venetian  opera,  Cato  being  discovered 
in  his  library,  Addison  is  gratified  to  see  that 
the  author  whom  the  Roman  stoic  studies  is 
Tasso. 

Addison  was  probably  the  earliest  English 
traveller  who  visited  San  Marino,  and,  conscious 
of  this  fact,  he  gives  a  special  chapter  to  an  account 
of  this  sympathetic  Republic.  He  tells  us  that  the 
inhabitants  are  forbidden  to  wander  about  the  slopes 
of  their  own  mountain,  lest  unconsciously  they 
should  tread  down  a  second  path  of  entrance  for 
a  possible  enemy.  Later  on,  with  much  intrepidity, 
Addison  ascends  Vesuvius  from  Naples,  and,  on 
his  way  back  to  Rome  by  sea,  stops  his  felucca  at 
Capri  and  at  Ischia.  Forced  to  lie  one  night 
tossing  under  the  promontory  of  Monte  Circeio, 
the  noise  of  the  wind  and  sea  on  the  rocks  reminds 
him  of  '  the  Howling  of  Wolves  and  the  Roaring 
of  Lions  ' ;  here  his  classic  reminiscences  come  upon 
him  thick  and  fast,  but  he  regrets,  in  more  homely 
language,  that  the  woods  '  are  most  of  'em  grubb'd 
up.'  One  of  the  most  interesting  passages  in  this 
neglected  volume  is  that  in  which  the  fact  of  making 
the  perilous  and  awkward  entrance  of  the  Tiber 


Addison's  Travels  55 

suggests  to  Addison  the  benefits  to  our  knowledge 
of  ancient  life  which  would  accrue  from  judicious 
excavation. 

From  one  end  of  Italy  to  the  other,  this  ingenious 
young  gentleman  of  Oxford,  with  difficulty  snatched 
from  Anglican  orders,  is  sternly  Protestant.  The 
legends  of  Rome  are  all  '  imposture '  and  *  bungling 
tricks ' ;  at  Siena  the  stories  about  St  Catherine 
seem  to  him  nothing  but  '  gross  and  absurd.'  Nor 
is  he  more  or  less  opposed  to  the  Gothic  forms  of 
architecture  than  were  his  contemporaries.  He 
is  passionately  in  favour  of  the  Palladian  style, 
and  all  others  seem  to  him  savage.  With  Milan 
Cathedral  he  is  extremely  disappointed,  and  he  dis- 
misses Siena  as  a  '  barbarous  Building.'  Palladio's 
church  of  Santa  Justina  in  Padua,  on  the  other  hand, 
lifts  him  to  an  ecstasy  ;  it  is  *  the  most  handsom, 
luminous,  disencumber'd  Building'  Addison  ever 
saw.  In  this  the  young  traveller  was  of  his  time. 
His  master  Boileau,  in  crushing  Ronsard,  had 
found  nothing  more  contemptuous  than  to  rhyme 
'  Gothique '  with  '  rustique,'  while  Moli^re,  in  *  La 
Gloire  du  Val-de-Grace,'  had  dismissed  the  exquisite 
cathedrals  of  his  own  country  as  '  ces  monstres 
odieux  des  siecles  ignorants.'  But  all  this  is  no 
worse  than  what  we  have  heard  Mr  Ruskin  say 
of  the  architecture  of  the  Renaissance,  and  every 
church,  like  every  dog,  may  have  its  day. 

Nor  could  Addison  be  expected  to  be  more  in 
sympathy  with  Alpine  scenery  than  with  Gothic 
architecture.     Yet  in  Switzerland  he  has  glimmer- 


56  Among  My  Books 

ings  of  appreciation.  The  panorama  of  the  Ober- 
land,  taking  him  wholly  by  surprise  from  the 
MUnster-Terrasse  at  Berne,  faintly  struck  the  chords 
of  emotion  ;  and  the  drive  from  Yvoire  to  Thonon 
filled  his  spirit  '  with  an  agreeable  kind  of  Horror.' 
Soleure,  now  so  dull  a  little  town,  appeared  to 
Addison  as  having  '  a  greater  Air  of  Politeness ' 
than  any  other  in  Switzerland  ;  and  he  is  strangely 
enthusiastic  about  St  Gallen,  which  was,  however, 
so  completely  rebuilt  half  a  century  later  than 
Addison's  time,  that  we  can  with  difficulty  place 
our  eyes  in  the  position  of  his.  On  the  whole, 
Addison's  lively  description  of  Swiss  places  and 
conditions  is  better  calculated  than  are  his  stiffer 
and  more  pedantic  Italian  chapters  to  make  us 
realise  what  he  visited,  and  the  changes  'twixt  now 
and  then.  For  one  thing,  his  inevitable  Common- 
place-book from  the  Classics  gave  out  as  soon  as 
he  crossed  the  Alps,  and  he  had  no  Lucan  or  Silius 
Italicus  to  tell  him  beforehand  what  his  sensations 
ought  to  be  by  the  Lake  of  Geneva  or  in  the  crocus 
meadows  of  the  valley  of  the  Aar. 


IX 

AMERICAN   HISTORIES 

BY  GOLDWIN   SMITH 

SIR  HENRY  MAINE  somewhere  speaks  of 
the  nauseous  grandiloquence  of  the  Ameri- 
can panegyrical  historians.  It  was  true,  no  doubt, 
when  he  wrote  that  in  American  histories  rhetoric 
was  apt  to  prevail  over  research,  and  that  there 
was  a  lack  of  the  judicial  quality,  especially  in 
dealing  with  questions  between  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain.  But  Sir  Henry  Maine  wrote 
some  time  ago,  and  American  historiography  has 
since  then  greatly  advanced  alike  in  research,  in 
impartiality,  and  in  purity  of  style. 

Nobody  will  complain  of  want  of  research  in  the 
works  of  Mr  Henry  Lea,  Mr  Justin  Winsor,  Mr 
John  Fiske,  Mr  Henry  Adam,  Mr  M'Master,  Mr 
Schouler,  or  Professor  Moses  Coit  Tylor,  to  men- 
tion only  those  whose  works  meet  the  writer's 
eye  on  his  shelves.  In  truth  there  has  now  set  in 
almost  a  mania  for  research,  partly  caught  in 
Europe,  which,  one  can  hardly  help  thinking,  leads 


58  Among  My  Books 

in  some  cases  to  a  waste  of  labour ;  as,  when  an 
elaborate  essay  is  written  about  municipal  institu- 
tions now  extinct,  which  were  unimportant  when 
they  existed,  and  about  the  actual  working  of 
which  we  can  know  little,  since  they  may  after 
all  have  been  mere  constitutional  masks  for  some 
one-man  power.  There  is  even  a  growing  disposi- 
tion, clearly  imported  from  Europe,  to  make  history 
what  is  called  '  scientific* — that  is  to  discard  its 
moral  and  personal  element  and  to  reduce  it  to  a 
dry  statement  of  phenomena  and  their  connection, 
analogous  to  the  method  of  physical  science,  and 
in  accordance  with  the  hypothesis  of  evolution.  It 
may  be  that  if  we  could  penetrate  to  the  origin  of 
all  things,  this  treatment  might  turn  out  to  be  cor- 
rect. We  might  find  that  the  whole  human  drama, 
with  all  that  appears  to  us  to  be  personal,  had  been 
predetermined  in  the  atoms  of  the  nebula ;  for  to 
that  or  to  something  still  more  remote  the  strictly 
evolutionary  theory  of  history  must  go  back.  But 
as  history  presents  itself  to  us  or  comes  within 
reach  of  our  intelligence,  personality  surely  is  ulti- 
mate, though  it  is  of  course  moulded  by  antecedent 
and  environment.  Had  a  bullet  entered  the  brain 
of  Cromwell  or  of  William  III  in  his  first  battle,  or 
had  Gustavus  not  fallen  at  Liitzen,  the  course  of 
history  apparently  would  have  been  changed.  The 
course  even  of  science  would  have  been  changed  if 
there  had  not  been  a  Newton  or  a  Darwin.  The 
personality  of  Napoleon  was  a  tremendous  factor, 
and  indeed  is  so  still,  since  all  this  militarism  is  to 


American  Histories  59 

a  great  extent  his  work ;  and  who  could  have  pre- 
dicted its  introduction  through  the  annexation  of 
Corsica  by  France?  Let  history  be  as  philo- 
sophic as  you  will,  the  attempt  to  exclude  from  it 
personality  would  surely  be  to  falsify  it  by  the 
suppression  of  a  great  factor,  as  well  as  to  deprive 
it  of  life. 

At  the  time  at  which  Maine  wrote,  grandilo- 
quence, nauseous  or  not,  certainly  prevailed  even 
in  so  highly  respectable  a  writer  as  Bancroft.  But 
this,  not  only  in  regard  to  literature,  but  in  regard 
to  oratory,  is  now  very  much  a  thing  of  the  past. 
Some  traces  may  occasionally  be  found.  One 
history,  essentially  very  valuable,  lies  before  us 
curiously  dotted  with  strained  metaphors,  through 
which  the  reader  longs  to  strike  his  pen.  But  it 
is  to  be  hoped  that,  while  spread-eagle  rhetoric  is 
discarded,  spirit  is  not  to  be  banished  from  the 
narrative  or  literary  grace  from  the  style.  Most 
readers,  after  all,  require  a  history  which  they  can 
read  with  pleasure,  and  which  easily  impresses 
itself  on  their  minds.  Hume  and  Robertson  have 
long  been  consigned  to  disgrace  for  their  want 
of  accurate  erudition,  especially  in  relation  to 
the  Middle  Ages,  which  to  them  and  their  con- 
temporaries were  merely  the  Dark  Ages,  while  to 
the  medievalist  of  our  day  they  appear  to  be  the 
special  ages  of  light.  But  we  must  not  be  alto- 
gether ungrateful  for  the  literary  skill  which,  by 
giving  us  a  lively,  luminous,  and  interesting  nar- 
rative, not  only  affords  us  pleasure,  but  fixes  the 


6o  Among  My  Books 

leading  facts  of  history  in  our  minds.  It  would 
not  be  difficult  to  name  works,  admirable  in  point 
of  erudition,  and  regarded  by  all  scholars  with  pro- 
found gratitude,  which  no  ordinary  mortal  could 
read,  or,  if  he  did  read,  could  possibly  remember. 
If  history  is  to  be  read,  common  people  must  have 
something  less  dry. 

The  impartiality  of  an  American  historian  is,  of 
course,  specially  tried  in  dealing  with  the  American 
Revolution,  and  all  the  subsequent  disputes  between 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain.  Having 
occasion  the  other  day  to  inspect  the  American 
school  histories,  about  the  partial  character  of 
which,  and  their  evil  influence  in  keeping  up 
Anglophobia,  a  good  deal  has  been  said,  I  found 
nothing  so  bad  as  I  had  been  led  to  expect.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  whatever  there  was  of  acrimony 
in  the  tone  had  been  sensibly  diminishing  of  late 
years.  England,  unhappily,  is  the  only  foreign 
nation  with  which  the  United  States  ever  waged 
serious  war,  and  the  military  records,  which  in 
theirs,  as  in  other  histories,  fill  a  disproportionate 
space,  are  all  records  of  battles  by  land  and  sea 
with  us.  Nor  was  it  to  be  expected  that  American 
writers  would  take  a  less  American  view  of  these 
questions  than  that  which  was  taken  by  English 
Whigs,  such  as  Chatham,  Fox,  and  Burke,  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolutionary  war.  But  in  the  recent 
American  historians,  at  least  those  of  high  reputa- 
tion, a  sincere  desire  to  be  impartial  or  even  to  be 
kind   to    Great   Britain   will    generally   be   found. 


American  Histories  6i 

Here  and  there  you  come  upon  what,  to  an 
Englishman  at  least,  appears  to  be  Anglophobic 
injustice.  In  the  interesting  series  of  '  Lives  of 
American  Statesmen/  a  few  such  passages  will  be 
found ;  but  the  best  of  them,  such  as  Mr  Carl 
Schurz's  '  Life  of  Henry  Clay,'  are  free  from 
anything  of  the  kind.  Some  of  the  American 
historians  or  biographers — Professor  Hosmer  for 
example — write  on  international  questions  just  as  a 
candid  Englishman  would  write. 

A  trial  now  awaits  the  American  historian  in  his 
judicial  character  which  it  will  not  be  very  easy  for 
a  native  writer  to  meet.  The  South  is  demanding 
a  version  of  the  history  of  the  Civil  War  rectified 
in  its  interest,  and  fitted  to  be  taught  in  its  schools. 
As  might  have  been  expected,  that  which  was  a 
memory  of  sorrow  to  the  vanquished  is  becoming  a 
memory,  perhaps  a  legend,  of  heroic  achievement 
to  their  sons.  A  Northerner  must  find  it  difficult 
to  place  himself  at  that  which  is  the  Southern,  and, 
perhaps,  in  a  certain  sense  the  right,  point  of  view. 
To  Northerners  secession  seemed  rebellion ;  and  if 
you  asked  them  for  what  they  were  fighting,  the 
general  answer  would  be  that  they  were  fighting 
to  make  the  South  submit  to  the  law.  Recon- 
struction proceeded  on  the  same  theory,  with  the 
untoward  result  of  putting  the  South  under '  carpet- 
bagging  '  government,  instead  of  turning  it  over,  as 
soon  as  it  had  fairly  submitted,  to  the  guidance  of 
its  natural  chiefs.  Legally  this  view  might  be 
right.     The  Union,   if  not   national  at   first,  had 


62  Among  My  Books 

become  national  in  course  of  time,  so  that  formally 
secession  would  be  rebellion,  and  the  war  to  which 
it  led  would  be  a  civil  war.  But  in  reality  the  war 
was  international,  and  was  in  fact  so  treated  from 
the  outset  by  the  North,  which  never  hanged  a 
Southerner  for  rebellion,  or  withheld  from  the 
Southern  soldiery  the  full  measure  of  belligerent 
right.  Nature,  more  powerful  and  authoritative 
than  any  constitutional  compact,  had  forced  apart, 
after  long,  uneasy,  and  at  length  insufferable  wed- 
lock, two  communities  radically  antagonistic  to 
each  other  in  social  structure,  and  therefore  incap- 
able of  political  union.  If  one  of  the  two  nations 
formed  by  the  rupture  was  warranted  in  attacking 
and  conquering  the  other,  the  justification  was  to 
be  found,  not  so  much  in  a  legal  claim  to  allegiance 
as  in  the  character  of  slavery,  the  danger  of  its 
propagation,  and  the  duty  owed  to  the  negro. 
The  trophies  and  statues  raised  by  the  North 
are  clearly  memorials  of  international  war ;  civil 
war  has  no  triumphs.  It  will  be  curious  to  see  a 
Southern  history,  especially  a  school  history,  of  the 
War  of  Secession. 


X 

THE   SCHOLARSHIP   OF   THE 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

BY   HERBERT   PAUL 

IF  I  wanted  a  book  to  amuse  me  on  a  railway 
journey,  I  would  as  soon  take  Porson's 
*  Letters  to  Travis '  as  any  other.  The  unfortunate 
Archdeacon  to  whom  they  were  addressed  has 
been  long  and  justly  forgotten.  The  spuriousness 
of  I  John  V.  7,  the  famous  record  of  the  Three 
Heavenly  Witnesses,  has  been  admitted  by  all 
competent  critics  for  a  hundred  years,  though  the 
text  continues  to  be  read  in  Christian  Churches 
as  a  genuine  part  of  the  Epistle.  Even  if  it  had 
been  found  in  all  the  Greek  manuscripts,  instead 
of  in  none,  Travis  would  have  been  totally  unfit 
to  defend  it,  or  anything  else,  against  a  real 
scholar. 

Wherein,  then,  lies  the  interest  of  the  book? 
I  answer  that  it  is  not  controversial  but  personal, 
and  that  the  author  is  a  typical  example  of 
a  profound   student,  who  was   also  a   great   man 


64  Among  My  Books 

of  letters,  freely  rolling   out   his    mind.      Porson 
wrote   it   in   the  prime  of  life  and   the   freshness 
of  his  powers,  before   his  natural   indolence   had 
gained    upon    him,    before    he    had    found    con- 
solation for  his  troubles  in  the  last  place  where 
it   should    be   sought.      In    humour,  in    learning, 
in  mental  power,  in  sarcasm  and   irony,  in  easy 
command  of  vivid,  racy,  vernacular   English,  he 
had   few   equals   and   no   superior.      He   did    not 
know   how   to    be    dull,  and    if  his  treatment  of 
ignorance   is  such  as  mercy  might  have  induced 
justice  to  spare,  we  must  remember  that   in  the 
ignorance  which  he  attacked  there  was  a  large  dose 
of  dishonesty.     And  if  Porson  gave  no  more  than 
justice  to  others,  he  received  far  less  than  justice 
himself     These  very  letters  are  the  result  of  theo- 
logical  studies   which   he,  and    he   almost   alone, 
thought  necessary  before  he  took  orders   in   the 
Church  of  England.     He  convinced  himself  that  he 
could  not  take  them,  and  that  at  a  time  when  Arian 
clergymen  might  be  counted  by  the  hundred,  while 
schoolmasters  and  college  tutors  became  deacons 
and  priests  as  formally  and  as  mechanically  as  they 
became  bachelors  and  masters  of  arts.     '  He  who 
puts  Christianity  before  truth,'  said  the  illustrious 
author   of  the   ecclesiastical   revival   in   the  nine- 
teenth  century,  'will   go   on  to   put   the   Church 
before  Christianity,  and  will  end  by  putting  him- 
self before  the  Church.'     Porson  put  truth  before 
everything,  and  what  was  his  reward?     He   lost 
his    clerical    Fellowship    at    Trinity   because  the 


Eighteenth  Century  Scholarship     65 

Master  would  not  give  him  a  lay  one.  That 
exemplary  divine  advised  him  to  become  a  parson, 
and  gave  the  lay  Fellowship  to  his  own  nephew. 
Porson  was  miserably  poor.  He  was  sent  to  Eton 
and  to  Cambridge  by  charity.  He  was  the  most 
acute  and  erudite  scholar  in  Europe.  The  noble 
foundation  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  the  later  and 
larger  foundation  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  cherish 
his  memory  with  pride.  But  the  official  head  of 
his  own  college,  a  minister  of  the  Church  of  Christ, 
told  him,  with  a  cynical  leer,  to  be  a  hypocrite 
or  starve.  His  stipend  as  Professor  of  Greek  was 
forty  pounds  a  year.  If  he  had  been  a  clergyman, 
he  would  have  become  a  Canon  of  Ely  and  a 
comparatively  rich  man. 

It  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  Porson  would 
treat  with  much  indulgence  a  professional  apologist 
of  orthodoxy  who  could  not  be  made  to  under- 
stand an  argument,  and  who  thought  collating 
manuscripts  the  same  thing  as  collecting  them. 
If  he  sometimes  made  fun  of  Mr  Travis,  and 
referred  him  to  the  authority  of  the  celebrated 
manual  Dormi  Secure  (Sleep  Soundly),  the 
temptation  must  have  been  irresistible,  especially 
as  Mr  Travis  would  never  see  the  joke  for  him- 
self But,  as  Macaulay  said,  when  one  praises  an 
author  one  should  give  specimens  of  his  wares. 
I  will  not  quote  from  the  criticism  of  Gibbon  in 
the  preface,  because  every  undergraduate,  if  not 
every  schoolboy,  knows  it.  The  following  passage 
may,  perhaps,  not  be  equally  familiar  : — *  Having 

E 


66  Among  My  Books 

at  last  discussed  the  subjects  of  Stephens'  and 
Beza's  orthodox  manuscripts,  I  am  compelled  to 
decide  (with  sorrow  I  pronounce  it!)  that  they 
have  disappeared  ;  perhaps  they  were  too  good 
for  this  world,  and,  therefore,  are  no  longer 
visible  on  earth.  However,  I  advise  the  true 
believers  not  to  be  dejected  ;  for,  since  all  things 
lost  from  earth  are  treasured  up  in  the  lunar 
sphere,  they  may  rest  assured  that  these  valuable 
relics  are  safely  deposited  in  a  snug  corner  of 
the  moon,  fit  company  for  Constantine's  donation, 
Orlando's  wits,  and  Mr  Travis'  learning.'  Constan- 
tine's donation  was  the  alleged  present  of  the 
Western  Empire  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  which 
would  indeed  have  been  splendid  if  it  had  been 
made.  *  Mr  Travis'  arguments  are  like  the  Sibyl's 
books :  they  contain  information  of  equal  truth, 
and  they  increase  in  value  by  the  diminution  of 
quantity.'  Of  Cyprian  he  says: — 'The  merits  of 
the  martyr  threw  a  shade  over  the  defects  of  the 
author,  and  the  veneration  that  ought  to  have  been 
confined  to  his  piety  was  extended  to  his  writings.' 
It  is  impossible  not  to  be  reminded  of  Gibbon. 
But  I  venture  to  say  that  the  comparison  will  not 
be  unfavourable  to  Porson.  Gibbon's  sentences 
would  have  been  longer,  less  direct,  and  more 
offensive.  Nor  was  Porson's  style  corrupted  by 
Gallicisms.  He  always  wrote  idiomatic  English, 
and  in  writing  he  always  aimed  straight  at  the 
mark.  '  I  pay  no  compliment  to  De  Missy  when  I 
say  that  he  had  a  clearer  and  more  critical  head 


Eighteenth  Century  Scholarship     67 

than  Cyprian/  It  would  be  difficult  to  kill  two 
birds  more  neatly  with  one  stone. 

Porson  was  not  merely  the  greatest  classical 
scholar  since  the  death  of  Bentley.  He  was  ac- 
quainted with  English  literature  as  few  classical 
scholars  at  that  time  were.  He  knew  Shakespeare 
as  we  should  all  like  to  know  him,  and  the  New 
Testament  as  we  all  ought  to  know  it — that  is  to 
say,  by  heart.  Even  Byron  never  made  a  better 
Shakespearian  quotation  than  Porson  flung  con- 
temptuously at  that  typically  bad  scholar,  Gilbert 
Wakefield,  who  presumed  to  criticise  his  edition  of 
the  Hecuba  of  Euripides — 'What's  Hecuba  to  him, 
or  he  to  Hecuba?'  He  was  saturated  with  Milton, 
Dryden,  and  Pope.  He  was  an  omnivorous  and  re- 
tentive reader,  whose  vast  knowledge  was  at  his  fin- 
gers' ends.  There  are  modern  professors  who  despise 
him  because  he  said  that  life  was  too  short  to  learn 
German.  I  will  not  ask  whether  it  is  possible  to  be 
the  worse  for  German.  There  are,  as  Porson  knew 
to  his  cost,  more  pernicious  forms  of  excess.  When 
he  applied  to  Hermann  the  well-known  epigram  of 
Phocylides,  he  perhaps  betrayed  a  patriotic  bias- 
On  the  other  hand,  if  his  eye  had  been  accustomed 
to  the  atrocities  of  the  German  printing-press,  he 
would  not  have  carried  out  his  wholesome  reform  in 
the  construction  of  Greek  type. 

The  *  Letters  to  Travis '  illustrate  the  leisurely 
scholarship  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  the  careless 
profusion  with  which  they  are  written.  Porson 
does  not  husband  his  strength,  or  keep  half  his 


68  Among  My  Books 

good  things  for  another  time.  He  might  have 
confuted  Travis  in  a  letter,  almost  in  a  page.  He 
gives  him  twelve  letters  and  exhausts  the  subject. 
But  he  does  much  more.  He  exhibits  the  prin- 
ciples of  sound  criticism,  the  nature  of  historic  and 
literary  evidence.  He  shows  by  the  example  which 
we  were  all  taught  in  youth  to  regard  as  better  than 
precept  how  the  authority  of  manuscripts  should  be 
weighed,  when  silence  is  a  proof  of  ignorance,  how 
a  marginal  gloss  gets  into  the  text,  under  what 
conditions  a  theologian  may  be  assumed  to  have 
used  the  best  evidence  at  his  disposal.  In  a  treatise 
of  this  comprehensive  sort  the  particular  dispute 
assumes  its  due  proportions,  and  is  dwarfed  by  the 
splendid  lesson  in  criticism  which  gives  its  perma- 
nent value  to  Porson's  work.  This  is  doubly  for- 
tunate ;  for  it  is  by  the  letters  alone  that  the  general 
reader  can  judge  of  Porson  at  all.  Fragments  of 
his  brilliant  conversation  ('  Wonderful  poet,  Mr 
Southey ;  his  poetry  will  be  read  when  Homer  and 
Virgil  are  forgotten')  have  been  preserved.  He 
delivered  no  lectures  at  Cambridge ;  he  would  have 
been  thought  eccentric  if  he  had.  He  wrote  politi- 
cal squibs  for  the  Morning  Chronicle^  but  daily 
journalism  is  the  most  perishable  of  all  commercial 
products.  He  edited  four  Greek  plays,  but  his 
notes  are  critical  of  the  text,  and  not  explanatory 
of  the  meaning.  He  said  himself  that  he  was  quite 
content  to  be  known  as  one  Porson  who  at  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century  did  something  for 
the  text  of  Euripides.     He  also  did  a  great  deal  to 


Eighteenth  Century  Scholarship     69 

make  Athenaeus  intelligible.  He  has  been  unlucky 
in  his  biographer,  a  clergyman  who  murdered 
Lucretius  and  translated  his  wife.  By  far  the  best 
account  of  him  is  Professor  Jebb's  admirable  article 
in  the  *  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,'  which  is 
really  perfect,  but,  of  course,  tantalisingly  brief 
His  brave,  sad,  and  too  brief  career  may  almost  be 
summed  up  in  a  sentence.  He  was  the  martyr  of 
honesty  and  the  slave  of  drink. 


XI 
A  LEAF  FROM  AN  INN  ALBUM 

BY  THE   EARL  OF   CREWE 

AMONG  '  books  which  are  no  books  ' — though 
he  mentioned  such  various  harvest  of  the 
human  mind  as  Court  Calendars,  Draught  Boards 
bound  and  lettered  at  the  back,  Statutes  at  large, 
the  works  of  Hume  and  Gibbon,  and  '  block-headed 
Encyclopaedias '  generally — Charles  Lamb  did  not 
happen  to  include  Inn  Albums  and  Visitors'  Books. 
It  is  possible  that  the  kindly  critic  may  have  judged 
with  tolerance  the  efforts  of  mild  sentiment  and 
milder  humour  which  crowd  their  pages,  and  that 
he  therefore  purposely  left  them  out  of  his  list :  be 
this  as  it  may,  to  the  ordinary  observer  their  chief 
interest  lies  in  the  singular  revelation  they  present 
of  a  dreadful  fact  not  commonly  recognised.  They 
make  it  evident  that  about  one  person  in  five  be- 
lieves that  he  or  she  is  capable  of  some  form  of 
literary  composition  worthy  of  being  set  down  and 
preserved.  Allowing  for  a  little  modesty  in  the 
remaining  four,  one  is  tempted  to  wonder  if  there 


72  Among  My  Books 

is  any  man  or  woman  alive  who  is  not  an  author  in 
secret,  and  to  thank  Heaven  that  in  literature  free 
coinage  is  unknown,  and  that  only  these  humble 
mints,  the  Visitors'  Books,  remain  always  open. 
And  though  the  better  educated  of  these  comtnis- 
voyageurs  Troubadours  would  not  admit  it,  they  are 
but  the  genteeler  cousins-german  of  those  other 
travellers  who  carve  their  names  on  the  temple  of 
Luxor,  or  treat  Vatican  statues  in  a  manner  which 
argues  a  contempt  for  graven  images  worthy  of 
Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego. 
A  leaf,  then,  from  an  Inn  Album — 

page  on  page  of  gratitude 
for  breakfast,  dinner,  supper  and  the  view, 

is  not  a  promising  subject ;  but  the  particular  leaf 
in  question  has  a  certain  interest  of  its  own.  In  a 
copy  of  Shelley's  '  Revolt  of  Islam'  (London,  1818) 
— once  the  property  of  that  industrious  collector, 
the  Rev.  John  Mitford,  and  annotated  in  his 
delicate  handwriting — is  inserted  what  he  describes 
as  '  A  page  from  the  Journal  Book  of  Chamouny  in 
Switzerland,'  containing  a  somewhat  notorious 
entry. 

During  the  summer  of  18 16,  Shelley,  with  Mary 
Godwin  and  her  half-sister  Jane  or  Claire  Clairmont, 
left  his  Windsor  retreat  for  Switzerland.  It  was  in 
a  large  measure  Jane  Clairmont's  expedition,  for 
Byron  was  at  Geneva  ;  and  though  her  fellow- 
travellers  suspected  nothing,  she  had  already  in- 
troduced herself  to  Byron,  under  pretence  of  seeking 


A  Leaf  from  an  Inn  Album       73 

a  Drury  Lane  engagement,  and  had  flung  herself 
into  his  not  unwilling  arms. 

The  intercourse  between  Byron  and  Shelley  at 
Diodati  and  on  Lake  Leman  furnishes  one  of  the 
most  interesting  passages  in  the  lives  of  English 
men  of  letters  ;  Byron,  however,  was  not  of  the 
party  which  started  for  Chamouni  towards  the 
end  of  July.  According  to  Professor  Dowden's 
account  (Life  of  Shelley,  Vol.  II.,  p.  29),  the 
travellers,  after  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  view  the 
Mer  de  Glace  on  July  the  24th,  succeeded  in  reach- 
ing Montanvert  on  the  following  day,  and  *  before 
they  left  Montanvert  the  travellers'  Album  had  re- 
ceived in  unusual  form,  but  one  not  to  be  mistaken, 
the  sign-manual  of  P.  B.  Shelley.'  The  entry,  how- 
ever, bears  the  date  July  the  23rd,  and  therefore 
Mitford  may  have  been  right  in  supposing  it  to 
have  been  made  at  Chamouni,  though  the  writer  in 
the  Quarterly  Review,  to  be  quoted  presently,  seems 
to  have  been  of  Professor  Dowden's  opinion. 

The  leaf  in  question  is  of  rough  blue-grey  paper, 
foolscap  size,  and  shows  evidence  of  having  been 
cut  from  a  book,  as  a  word  or  two  is  missing  from 
each  line  on  the  inner  margin.  It  is  ruled  by  hand 
into  vertical  divisions  headed  respectively  *  jours, 
mois,  noms  des  voyageurs,  lieu  de  naissance  et 
profession,  d'ous  ils  viennent,  ou  ils  sont  dirig^, 
observations.'  Both  sides  of  the  paper  are  full  of 
names,  and  many  of  the  travellers  have  contributed 
in  various  languages  to  the  column  of  observations. 
There   is   nothing  very  striking  in  the  list  ;    the 


74  Among  My  Books 

Shelley  names  are  immediately  followed  by  those 
of  The  Mackintosh  and  his  wife,  and  one  wonders 
what  the  Highland  magnates  thought  of  the  poet 
and  his  companions.  Then  follows  Lord  Darling- 
ton, with  some  members  of  his  family,  and  *  Newby 
Lowson,  Esq.' — a  Wagg  or  Wenham  perhaps — 
against  whose  name  somebody  has  pencilled,  '  A 
Curious  fellow  this,*  Lord  Darlington,  afterwards 
first  Duke  of  Cleveland,  famous  in  the  hunting  and 
racing  world  of  his  time — 

Darlington's  peer 
With  his  chin  sticking  out  and  his  cap  on  one  ear — 

was  also  a  curious  fellow  in  his  way,  and  if  he 
objected  to  the  Shelley  manage  it  could  not  have 
been  upon  moral  grounds.  Later  comes  a  vast 
family  of  Hales,  against  whom  the  inevitable 
buffoon  has  written  '  All  Hale ! !  vide  Mackbeth,' 
and  then  a  gentleman,  unknown  to  fame,  but  who 
sounds  like  a  specimen  of  those  who  in  their  way, 
too,  have  helped  to  make  England  great,  '  John 
Pycroft — English — Lausanne  to  Geneva — and  no 
poet.* 

At  the  top  of  Shelley's  page  is  the  latter  part  of 
what  was  evidently  a  long,  fervid,  and  ill-expressed 
outpouring  of  religious  thankfulness  inspired  by 
the  grandeur  of  the  surroundings.  The  writer's 
name  does  not  appear.  Professor  Dowden  is  surely 
right  in  his  surmise  that  it  was  this  well-intended 
but  tasteless  exhibition  of  conventional  piety  which 
excited  Shelley  to  his  expression  of  revolt ;  but  it 


A  Leaf  from  an  Inn  Album       75 

may  be  added  that  he  was  by  no  means  the  only 
protester,  and  certainly  not  the  rudest  One 
commentator  has  scrawled  *  Methodist — what  non- 
sense/ in  the  margin  ;  and  another  inquires,  '  Why 
are  people  anxious  to  make  themselves  ridiculous 
in  the  eyes  of  everybody  ? '  While  a  third  has 
written  on  a  mutilated  part  of  the  sheet,  but 
seems  to  declare  that  *  any  one  listening  to  this 
nonsense  must  be  a  complete  gudgion  ! ' 

The  Shelley  entry  runs  thus  : — 

Percy  B.  Shelley — (lieu  de  naissance)  Sussex — 
(ou  ils  sont  dirige)  L'enfer — (observations)  eijULi 
^iXavOpcoTTog,  SrjjuLOKpaTiKOS  t  aOeog  re. 

Next  comes  M.  W.  G.  (Mary  WoUstoncraft 
Godwin),  born  in  London,  coming  from  England, 
and  bound  for  the  same  unpleasant  destination  as 
Shelley. 

The  third  entry,  Madlle.  C.  C.  (Claire  Clairmont) 
— (lieu  de  naissance)  Clifton. 

In  his  notice  of  the  incident.  Professor  Dowden 
(Vol.  II.,  p.  30)  states  : — 

A  third  comer,  it  is  said,  added  the  word  fiojpds,  and  Byron,  on 
visiting  Montanvert,  defaced  Shelley's  atheist  and  his  successor's 
fool. 

This  account,  founded,  as  the  writer  tells  us,  on 
Mr  Swinburne's  recollection  of  the  original  docu- 
ment, is  not  quite  accurate.  Under  Shelley's  de- 
claration a  later  traveller  has  written,  from  Psalm 
liii.  v.  I  : — 

6  &(t)p(3}v  eXirev  iv  rrj  Kapdlcf,  dvrov,  ovk  ((Ttl  deds. 

Unlike  Shelley,  he  has  carefully  added  his  ac- 


76  Among  My  Books 

cents,  and,  to  point  his  moral,  has  heavily  under- 
lined the  Greek  word  rendered  in  our  version  fool, 
and  the  name  Percy  B.  Shelley — who  said  in  his 
heart  there  is  no  God.  Professor  Dowden  continues 
(p.  30,  note)  :— 

We  hear  nothing  of  the  /Awpis  from  Lord  Broughton,  who  was 
present  on  the  occasion  of  Byron's  discovering  Shelley's  entry  in 
the  visitors'  book.  'At  an  inn  on  the  road,'  he  writes,  *  the 
travellers'  book  was  put  before  us,  and  Lord  Byron,  having  written 
his  name,  pointed  out  to  me  the  name  of  Mr  Shelley,  with  the  words 
'atheist'  and  'philanthropist'  written  in  Greek  opposite  to  it,  and 
observing,  "  Do  you  not  think  I  shall  do  Shelley  a  service  by  scratch- 
ing this  out  ?  "  he  defaced  the  words  with  great  care.'  ('  Italy,  Re- 
marks made  in  Several  Visits,  etc.,'  Vol.  L,  pp.  1-2.) 

Either  Lord  Broughton's  memory  failed  on  the 
precise  detail  of  what  happened,  or  Byron  purposely 
misled  him,  for  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  deface 
either  Shelley's  writing  or  his  critic's.  But  a  toler- 
ably successful  effort  has  been  made  to  efface  the 
entry  of  Claire  Clairmont's  initials,  and  to  a  less 
extent  the  word  '  Clifton,'  so  that  it  is  only  just  pos- 
sible to  make  out  the  '  Madlle.  C.  C  In  this  light 
it  is  not  difficult  to  amend  Lord  Broughton's  story. 
Byron  would  scarcely  trouble  himself  greatly  over 
Shelley's  extravagance,  but  at  this  time  he  had 
long  been  estranged  from  Claire,  and  was  just  the 
man  to  erase  anything  that  reminded  him  of  a 
disagreeable  and  discreditable  episode,  in  which  he 
had  played,  not  merely  a  loose,  but  a  heartless  part. 

That  Allegra's  mother  should  have  been  de- 
scribed as  '  Madlle.'  a  few  months  before  her  child 
was  born  may  or  may  not  have  contributed  to  the 


A  Leaf  from  an  Inn  Album       77 

deletion.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  clear,  from  any 
information  to  be  obtained  elsewhere,  why  Clifton 
should  have  been  written  opposite  Claire  Clair- 
mont's  name. 

Such  was  Shelley's  foolish,  bitter  jest — bad  Greek, 
and  bad  taste.  It  might  well  have  passed  un- 
noticed by  the  world,  but  an  article  in  the  Quarterly 
Review  (No.  xxxvi.,  Jan.  1818,  'Foliage,'  by  Leigh 
Hunt)  seems  to  show  that  a  comment  upon  it  was 
expected  to  be  intelligible  to  ordinary  readers. 
After  allusion  to  the  audacities  of  Laon  and 
Cythna,  to  Shelley's  expulsion  from  Oxford,  and 
to  his  domestic  troubles,  the  Reviewer  proceeds  : — 

If  we  were  told  of  a  man,  who,  placed  on  a  wild  rock  among  the 
clouds,  yet  even  in  that  height  surrounded  by  a  loftier  amphitheatre 
of  spire-like  mountains  hanging  over  a  valley  of  eternal  ice  and  snow, 
where  the  roar  of  mighty  waterfalls  was  at  times  unheeded  from 
the  hollow  and  more  appalling  thunder  of  the  unseen  avalanche — if 
we  were  told  of  a  man  who  then  witnessing  the  sublimest  assem- 
blage of  natural  objects,  should  retire  to  the  cabin  near  and  write 
d^eos  after  his  name  in  the  album,  we  hope  our  own  feeling  would 
be  pity  rather  than  disgust ;  but  we  should  think  it  imbecility  to 
court  that  man's  friendship,  or  to  celebrate  his  intellect  or  his  heart 
as  the  wisest  or  warmest  of  the  age. 

Shelley's  fame  has  long  outlived  any  possibility 
of  abatement  owing  to  the  most  high-flown  or  most 
excusable  reproofs  from  Quarterly  Reviewers  and 
their  kind  ;  and  perhaps  the  wisest  course  is  to  read 
*  Mont  Blanc,'  and  to  forget  all  about  the  Inn 
Album.  Which  seems  to  show  that  this  paper  had 
better  not  have  been  written. 


XII 
BYSSHE:    A  DIALOGUE 

BY  JOHN   OLIVER   HOBBES 

*  T  LIKE  Hamlet,'  confessed  Bysshe.  'Goethe 
A  and  Victor  Hugo  have  tried  everything,  but 
Shakespeare  has  said  everything.  Humanity,  in 
his  plays,  is  set  before  us  as  perfectly  and  more 
delightfully  than  Nature.  He  eliminates  the  lie 
from  the  fact,  whereas  Nature  is  always  obliged  to 
give  the  lie  as  well.  There's  a  good  deal  in  that 
old  doctrine  of  Original  Sin.  Again,  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  that  spleeny  Luther  had  not  yet 
jaundiced  all  the  poetry  of  the  world.  My  comfort 
is  that  Shakespeare  felt  the  malady  approaching, 
and  broke  the  magic  staff,  and  drowned  the  book 
of  inspiration,  in  time.  Prospero's  abjuration  in 
The  Tempest — (there's  a  tragedy  for  you  !) — is  but  a 
sad  farewell  to  his  enthusiasm — to-  that  wisdom 
which  Socrates  possessed  till  the  end,  and  called 
a  dream,  which  we  would  fain  possess,  and  call 
Romance  !  In  our  days  enthusiasm  is  regarded  as 
the   virtue   of    dupes,   and    distinguished    modern 


8o  Among  My  Books 

writers  at  home  and  abroad  have  every  literary 
gift  except  that  essential  one — you  may  call  it  by 
another  name,  if  you  like — piety.' 

At  this  point  Adolphus  Simnel,  who  had  met 
Flaubert  and  was  not  insensible  to  that  distinction, 
asked  : 

'  What  has  piety  to  do  with  literary  art  ? ' 
'  This,'  replied  Bysshe.  '  It  is  impossible  for  an 
impious — and  therefore  selfish — mind  to  possess 
that  genial  humour  which  is  inseparable  from  a 
sound  judgment,  or  to  understand  Irony,  which, 
as  you  will  admit,  makes  the  strength  of  tragedy, 
the  gaiety  of  comedy,  the  pathos  of  life,  and  the 
whole  business  of  metaphysic' 

*  Good  Lord  ! '  ejaculated  Adolphus  Simnel. 

*  You  could  not  call  on  a  better  Critic  ! '  returned 
the  elderly  amateur  Bysshe.  'But  to  resume. 
Had  your  infinitely  accomplished  friend,  the  late 
M.  Flaubert,  enjoyed  the  grace  of  piety,  he  would 
have  been  as  great  a  humorist  as  Cervantes ! 
Madame  Bovary,  poor  creature,  is  Don  Quixote  all 
over  again — with  a  difference.' 

*  This,'  said  Simnel,  *  is  enormous  !  Yet  it  has 
something  in  it  to  interest  the  imagination.  Pray 
go  on.' 

*  I  am  not  an  author,'  continued  Bysshe.  '  I  am 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  an  absurd  person,  yet 
whenever  I  read  a  book  I  ask  myself  the  question, 
"  How  ought  one  to  write  of  human  beings  ?  In 
an  idealistic  way  or  in  a  natural  way  ?  "  All  men 
are  engaged  either  on  this  side  or  that.    I  think,  and 


Bysshe:    A  Dialogue  8i 

I  believe  I  have  the  world  with  me  here,  that  the 
idealist  is  right.  I  will  explain  why.  Before  one 
can  idealise  life  one  must  have  triumphed  over  it. 
The  idealist  is  the  master  of  his  material,  whereas 
the  naturalist  must  ever  be  its  slave.  Don  Quixote 
is  the  man  who  conquers,  because  he  looks  above 
the  baseness  of  appearances.  Madame  Bovary  is 
neither  man  nor  woman,  but  a  tortured  egoism, 
perishing  horridly  of  disappointments  because  the 
world  cannot  give  that  intoxication  which — to  do 
it  justice — it  has  never  promised.  In  one  case  we 
see  the  strength  of  ideals,  in  the  other,  the  weak- 
ness of  lies.  Compare  the  work  of  these  two  men 
of  genius.  You  will  see  how  much  they  have  in 
common,  yet  how  differently  they  bear  the  trials  of 
existence.  The  Man  has  taught  us  sympathy  and 
courage ;  the  Temperament  has  tried  to  teach  us 
hatred  and  despair.  All  sane  young  people  read 
Cervantes  with  pleasure,  while  they  recoil  from 
Flaubert  in  dismay.' 

'  Dear  soul,'  said  Simnel,  *  Flaubert  felt,  with  an 
exquisite  anguish,  the  fatuity,  the  ignorance,  the 
odiousness,  the  imbecility,  the  stale  immorality, 
the  degradation  of  the  self-satisfied  intolerable 
middle-classes.  He  was  a  great  artist.  He  wrote 
for  ten  or  twelve  persons  only.' 

'When  I  think,'  said  Bysshe,  'that  Almighty 
God  was  willing  to  come  down  from  Heaven,  and 
sit  anywhere,  in  order  to  tell  a  lot  of  vulgar  people 
the  most  perfect  little  stories  in  all  creation — I 
refer  to  the  Parables — I  own  that  I  cannot  tolerate 

F 


82  Among  My  Books 

the  gifted  beings  who  can  only  bring  themselves 
to  address  a  little  circle  who  are  not,  by-the-bye, 
especially  anxious  to  be  addressed.' 

*  Flaubert/  said  Adolphus  Simnel,  '  had  a  great 
admiration  for  the  Evangelists,  for  Cervantes,  and, 
indeed,  for  most  of  those  old  Masters.  But,  as  he 
remarked  so  well,  they  write  very  badly.  I  am 
getting  to  like  them,  but  it  is  impossible  to  take 
their  work,  as  the  bourgeois  do,  prodigiously  au 
serieux.     What  do  you  think,  Mrs  Carillon  ? ' 

'Well,  dear  Madame  Sand  was  quite,  quite 
different,'  replied  Mrs  Carillon.  *  She  wrote  be- 
cause it  was  her  profession  to  write.  There  are 
ten  thousand  ways  of  being  impressive.  She  had 
but  one  ;  and  meditation,  to  such  a  sensibility,  was 
useless.  She  was  a  great  child,  without  logic  and 
without  training,  with  an  incomparable  gift  of 
language  and  a  boundless  human  charity.  She 
could  love  marionettes  and  poets,  she  could  stir  up 
revolutions  and  study  botany.  She  could  teach 
her  grandchildren  the  alphabet,  and  inform  Flau- 
bert, with  her  own  simplicity,  that,  after  all  his 
pains,  she  was  still  his  superior  in  literary  style.' 

'  She  was,  no  doubt,'  said  Bysshe,  '  a  woman 
more  to  be  remembered  than  most,  and,  beyond 
question,  the  finest  babbler  that  the  republic  of 
letters  has  so  far  produced.  But,  dear  lady,  she 
babbled  consummate  nonsense,  dangerous  non- 
sense, and  sometimes  the  sort  of  nonsense  called 
inconv  enable! 

'  True,'  said  Mrs  Carillon,  *  yet  she  was  so  extra- 


Bysshe:    A  Dialogue  83 

ordinarily  kind.  She  had  many  passions,  but  not 
a  single  vice.  Now  I  have  read  every  line  of 
Flaubert,  not  once,  but  often.  The  more  I  read 
him  the  less  I  agree  with  him,  yet  I  can  never 
leave  him  without  crying.  He  does  not  seem  a 
soul  in  bliss,  but  a  soul  in  the  other  state  ...  or 
almost.  .  .  .  '  The  tears  I  have  shed  over  "  Bouvard 
and  P6cuchet " — the  tears  ! ' 

She  moved,  as  she  spoke,  to  the  piano,  and, 
sitting  before  it,  played  the  first  bars  of  '  Tristan 
und  Isolde.' 

Said  Bysshe,  *  Nevertheless,  I  like  Hamlet ! ' 


XIII 
KEYS  TO  THE  UNIVERSE 

BY  VERNON   LEE 

OVER  one  of  the  outer  portals  of  the  Alhambra 
is  engraved,  as  the  traveller  will  rememberj 
a  large,  enigmatic  key.  I  had  reason  to  believe, 
at  one  time,  that  it  was  the  key  unlocking  the 
Treasure-house  of  King  Yahya  and  the  subter- 
ranean palace  of  his  enchanted  daughter ;  and  I 
even  communicated  this  view,  at  considerable 
length,  to  the  readers  of  the  Journal  des  Debats. 
But  I  have  waxed  mystical,  like  the  rest  of  us,  of 
late,  and  so  I  now  think  that  the  key  on  the  horse- 
shoe portal  has  nothing  to  do  with  treasures  or 
infantas,  and  is  simply  a  symbolic  '  Key  to  the 
Universe.' 

In  our  salad  days  books  are  very  often  *  Keys  to 
the  Universe ' ;  and  it  is  on  this  pretext  that  I  am 
allowed  to  mention  the  subject  of  them  in  these 
pages.  We  can  all  of  us  remember  having  thought 
that  the  reading  of  some  particular  book,  or  set  of 
books,  would  act  as  an  Open  Sesame  admitting  us 
to  the  terraces  and  pinnacles  of  thought  whence  all 
things  human  and  divine  would  be  discernible, 
map-like  and  clear,  at  our  feet.  For  some  the 
books  have  been  books  on  philosophy ;  for  others, 


86  Among  My  Books 

books  on  political  economy ;  for  Petrarch,  as  we 
know,  the  book  was  Homer  in  Greek,  which  he 
kept  by  him  and  could  not  read.  For  the  writer 
of  these  lines,  I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  the  key 
to  the  universe  resided  at  one  time  in  a  treatise  on 
thorough  bass,  perhaps  owing  to  an  insuperable 
di^culty  in  grasping  whether  progression  by  fourths 
was  extremely  desirable  or  absolutely  forbidden. 
But  whatever  the  books,  I  think  it  is  certain  that 
no  reader  of  them  ever  found  that  they  opened 
any  such  door  as  he  expected.  Indeed,  it  seems 
probable  that  if  books  ever  do  act  as  keys  to  the 
universe,  or  to  the  smallest  pigeon-hole  of  the 
universe,  it  is  probably  the  books  which  have  not 
been  expected  to  do  anything  of  the  kind,  and  even 
those  of  which  we  have  suspected  it  only  long 
after.  For  we  have  a  way  of  looking,  so  to  speak, 
for  the  universe  on  the  wrong  side,  as  we  look 
sometimes,  in  a  shuttered  room,  for  a  window  on 
the  side  where  there  is  only  dead  wall ;  and  we  do 
not  alwkys  recognise  the  universe  when  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  it.  And  yet  that  was  the  universe, 
perhaps  the  only  universe  (all  the  rest  vanity  and 
delusion)  we  shall  ever  really  enter  in  the  spirit, 
that  land  of  Cockayne  into  which  we  were  admitted 
by  some  line  of  poetry,  some  despised  boys'  book 
of  adventure. 

From  which  statement  it  may  be  gathered  that 
I  tend  to  believe  that  the  only  universe  we  can 
ever  really  know  is  the  universe  which  we  know 
not  through  processes   of  induction  or  deduction, 


Keys  to  the  Universe  87 

but  through  thoroughgoing  enjoyment  or  weary 
longing  or  bitter  grief.  For  the  universe  whose 
key  we  each  of  us  seek  for  is  a  subjective  universe, 
composed  of  those  elements  of  our  own  experience 
which  are  nearest  akin  to  ourselves.  This  is 
obscure,  so  I  proceed  to  explain. 

It  struck  me  the  other  day,  at  the  mention  of  a 
well-known  firm  of  solicitors,  that,  in  the  eyes  of 
a  certain  friend  of  mine,  these  gentlemen  un- 
doubtedly hold  the  key  to  the  universe.  Un- 
formulated to  himself,  my  friend  feels  that  what 
Messrs  Blank  &  Co.  know,  explains,  or  might 
explain,  the  problems  of  life  which,  to  his  temper 
of  mind,  are  the  most  far-reaching,  the  secret  of 
the  world's  how  and  why.  To  his  temper  of 
mind ;  but  not  to  the  temper  of  mind  of  some 
other  person,  who  may  have  the  same  sort  of 
feeling  for,  say,  the  nerve-doctor,  or  the  mystic 
theologian,  or  the  dealer  in  statistics.  Indeed,  it 
is  in  this  exclusively  individual  quality  that  lies 
the  interest  and  utility  of  these  various  views ; 
each  individual's  key  to  the  universe  being  in  fact 
a  key  to  his  personality. 

But  before  developing  this  theme,  allow  me  to 
open  a  parenthesis  to  state  that  the  key  to  the 
universe  is  not  by  any  means  the  key,  necessarily, 
to  any  particular  thing  which  we,  individually, 
require  to  know  for  practical  purposes.  In  that 
sense  every  teacher  is  perpetually  turning  a  key 
which  is  beyond  the  grasp  of  his  pupil ;  and  every 
successful  man  of  business,  ojfficial,  soldier,  sailor, 


88  Among  My  Books 

or  candlestick-maker  is  doing  the  same,  surrounded 
by  hopeless  mystery,  before  the  eyes  of  his  un- 
successful competitors  ;  let  alone  (and  here  the  key 
seems  almost  a  literal  reality)  the  fortunate  man  or 
woman  of  the  world,  before  whom  all  doors  open 
by  unfathomable  agency!  But  such  persons  are 
not  those  who  worry  about  the  key  to  the  universe, 
or  about  the  universe  at  all.  Nay,  it  is  not  the 
key  to  the  universe  which  is  being  puzzled  about 
by  the  fond  mother  and  the  humble,  unrequited 
lover,  much  as  they  may  wonder  about  the  nature 
of  certain  keys  (and  such  wonder  is  surely  among 
the  most  pathetic  things  in  the  world) :  *  How  does 
that  quite  uninteresting  school  friend,  that  booby 
with  his  silly  jokes,  get  to  the  soul  of  my  boy — 
the  soul  which  is  closed  to  me  ? '  or  '  how  (alas !) 
can  the  frivolous  fingers  of  such  a  woman  turn  the 
locks  in  my  hero's  breast?'  Those  are  the  keys, 
not  of  the  universe,  but  of  what  concerns  us  much 
more  closely,  the  keys  of  other  people's  hearts. 
But  'tis  a  subject  almost  too  melancholy  to  touch 
upon.  Besides,  it  involves  one  of  the  chief  aspects 
of  the  problem  of  evil,  to  wit :  Why  love  and 
confidence  are  so  oddly  distributed  in  the  world, 
and  why  the  people  who  could  are  so  rarely 
allowed  to  help  each  other  along.  This  comes 
under  the  heading  of  the  universe  (by  which 
means  I  close  my  parenthesis),  and  the  key  of  the 
section  is  held  in  turns,  by  Mother  Church,  by  the 

late  Schopenhauer,  and  by . 

The   key  to   the   universe   has,  per  se,  nothing 


Keys  to  the  Universe  89 

necessarily  tragic  about  it.  It  is  interesting,  as  I 
remarked,  not  because  it  produces  dramatic  com- 
motions, but  because  it  is  one  of  the  best  indications 
afforded  of  the  most  deep  down  and  essential 
peculiarities  of  individual  character — peculiarities 
which  the  uniformities  of  education  usually  over- 
lay, and  the  accidents  of  life  chaotically  jumble. 
Now  the  stuff  of  which  an  individual  character 
consists,  its  real  inherent  spontaneous  organic 
tissue,  is,  so  to  speak,  a  sample  of  one  of  the 
forces  of  Nature.  For,  as  many  as  there  are  such 
varieties  of  human  stuff,  each  with  its  own  inevi- 
table modes  of  absorbing,  rejecting,  of  decom- 
posing, and  sometimes  of  exploding — so  many 
(but  multiplied  by  each  other)  are  the  contingencies 
and  complications  of  human  existence.  Now,  in 
my  sense  of  the  word,  the  key  to  the  universe,  con- 
ceived by  A  as  in  the  hand  of  B,  is  the  indication 
of  the  real  disinterested,  irrational  (and  therefore 
irresistible)  interests,  curiosities,  and  biases  of  A. 
Take  for  instance  the  persons  to  whom  severally 
(and  with  much  depreciation  of  all  the  others)  the 
key  to  the  universe  is  in  the  keeping  of  Carlyle, 
or  Browning,  or  Renan,  or  Ruskin,  or  Tolstoi,  or 
Ibsen.  .  .  .  And  thus  invoking  impartially  each 
and  all  of  these  great  names,  let  the  present 
writer  withdraw,  hazarding  the  opinion  that  in 
literature,  as  in  all  else,  appreciation,  rather  than 
criticism,  is  one  of  the  chief  keys  to  the  universe. 


XIV 
AN   ARAB   CLASSIC 

BY  STANLEY   LANE-POOLE 

THE  Arabs  had  a  curious  and  effective 
manner  of  reviewing.  In  the  Time  of 
Ignorance,  before  the  advent  of  the  blessed 
Prophet,  the  poets  of  the  desert  submitted  their 
verses  to  the  judgment  of  their  countrymen  assem- 
bled at  the  great  annual  Fair  which  served  as  the 
Olympia  of  their  race.  The  protagonists  of  the 
rival  tribes  were  carefully  masked,  lest  winged 
words  should  be  followed  by  less  metaphorical 
arrows,  and  their  poems  were  impartially  recited  by 
a  Public  Orator.  The  acclamation  of  the  multi- 
tude decided  the  event,  and  the  clan  whose  poet 
won  the  Arabian  substitute  for  the  bays  immedi- 
ately indulged  in  feasting  and  self-glorification. 
The  discovery  of  a  tribal  poet  was  a  source  of 
pride  scarcely  excelled  by  the  birth  of  a  son  to 
their  chief  or  the  foaling  of  their  favourite  mare. 
In  Mohammedan  times  the  criticism  of  authors 
was    conducted    in    an    equally    public    manner. 


92  Among  My  Books 

When  a  man  had  produced  something  he  thought 
particularly  good,  he  hastened  to  the  Mosque  to 
share  it  with  his  critics.  He  was  sure  to  find  them 
there,  doctors  learned  in  the  law,  poets,  commen- 
tators, seated  cross-legged  on  their  carpets  in  the 
arched  porticos  round  the  court,  expounding  the 
refinements  of  style  to  a  circle  of  squatting 
students.  To  this  audience  he  would  recite  his 
latest  achievement,  proud  but  tremulous.  It  must 
have  been  a  searching  ordeal,  for  the  listeners 
were  some  of  them  rivals,  and  all  of  them  keen 
critics,  on  the  alert  for  the  least  flaw,  the  slightest 
halt  in  the  rhythm,  the  smallest  lapse  from  the 
purity  of  the  classical  idiom.  They  had,  too,  a 
way  of  expressing  their  opinions  which  was  more 
forcible  than  kind.  There  was  a  hot  debate,  much 
citing  of  precedents  and  quoting  of  the  Masters, 
exploring  of  memory,  and  examination  of  texts. 
The  new  comer  defended  his  diction  and  produced 
his  authorities  ;  the  rest  cut  him  up  in  remorseless 
verbal  vivisection.  It  was  Athanasius  contra  mun- 
duin^  and  the  extraordinary  thing  is,  not  that 
Athanasius  survived  and  went  on  writing,  but  that 
he  sometimes  profited  by  the  heckling  of  his 
critics,  was  actually  convinced  of  his  sins,  and 
amended  his  ways ;  which,  as  an  experienced  re- 
viewer will  perceive,  is  absurd. 

It  is  true,  nevertheless ;  and  an  authentic  ex- 
ample lies  before  me,  in  the  book  called  '  The 
Assemblies  of  Hariri.'  Humiliating  as  it  is,  I 
am   aware   that    I    shall    be   instantly   confronted 


An  Arab  Classic  93 

with  the  question,  Who  or  what  was  Hariri? 
Was  it  a  town,  or  a  man,  or  a  tribe,  or  a  cult? 
I  can  only  reply  that  an  Oriental  gentleman  with 
any  pretence  to  polite  scholarship  would  as  soon 
confess  his  ignorance  of  Hariri  as  an  English 
gentleman  fifty  years  ago  would  have  admitted 
that  he  could  not  quote  Horace.  Both  these 
ideals  are  passing  away,  yet  to  the  educated  Arab 
the  '  Assemblies '  are  still  the  sum  and  perfection 
of  literary  form,  and  even  Europeans  have  fallen 
under  their  spell.  Ruckert  imitated  them  with 
poetic  ingenuity  in  German  ;  and  the  late  Professor 
Dieterici  would  sometimes  wander  into  a  friend's 
room  in  a  vague  ecstasy  and  explain  that  he  had 
been  *  meandering  in  the  delicious  mazes  of  the 
flowery  gardens  of  Hariri.'  For  nearly  eight  cen- 
turies his  *  Makdmdt '  have  been  regarded  (to  cite  a 
scarcely  less  fervent  disciple,  the  late  Mr  Chenery) 
as,  '  next  to  the  Koran,  the  chief  treasure  of  the 
Arabic  tongue.  Contemporaries  and  posterity  have 
vied  in  their  praises  of  him.  His  "  Assemblies " 
have  been  commented  with  infinite  learning  and 
labour  in  Andalusia  and  on  the  banks  of  the 
Oxus.  His  poetry  has  been  sung  at  the  feasts  of 
the  great,  and  by  the  camel  drivers  in  the  desert. 
To  appreciate  his  marvellous  eloquence,  to  fathom 
his  profound  learning,  to  understand  his  varied  and 
endless  allusions  have  always  been  the  highest 
object  of  the  literary,  wherever  the  Arabic  lan- 
guage has  been  scientifically  studied.'  The  extra- 
ordinary difficulties  and  refinements  of  his  style 


94  Among  My  Books 

have  made  its  skilful  translation,  as  it  were,  the 
philosopher's  stone  of  Orientalists,  and  Mr  Chenery's 
version,  with  its  exhaustive  commentary,  is  among 
the  many  services  which  that  admirable  scholar 
unobtrusively  rendered  to  learning. 

El-Hariri  belonged  to  the  critical,  artificial, 
imitative  period  of  Arabic  literature.  The  time 
of  Creation  was  past,  when  the  early  desert  poets 
composed  those  '  Golden '  Odes  and  *  Linked ' 
Kasidas,  which  tradition  long  believed  were  sus- 
pended, to  their  eternal  glory,  on  the  walls  of 
the  holy  Kaaba  at  Mecca.  The  age  of  Recollec- 
tion had  followed,  when  to  recite  the  classic  verse 
was  esteemed  better  than  to  compose  anything 
new,  and  when  Hammad  exerted  his  prodigious 
memory  by  declaiming  at  a  sitting  two  thousand 
nine  hundred  poems,  a  hundred  rhyming  with 
each  of  the  twenty-nine  letters  of  the  alphabet, 
till  the  Caliph  Welid  was  prostrated  with  listening 
to  them.  It  became  the  ambition  of  the  man  of 
letters  to  model  his  style  closely  upon  classical 
examples ;  to  treasure  up  rare  phrases,  peculiar 
grammatical  constructions,  recondite  allusions, 
curious  metaphors  ;  to  play  upon  the  sounds  and 
meanings  of  words,  and  to  test  the  wits  of  his 
hearers  by  the  obscurity  of  the  double  entente. 
Artificial  as  such  compositions  must  be,  they  have 
had  their  fascination  in  most  literatures,  especially 
for  the  nicest  scholars,  whose  critical  taste  and 
learned  apparatus  found  free  play  in  such  conceits. 
Hariri  was  of  this  sort — a  man  of  immense  literary 


An  Arab  Classic  95 

resources,  remarkable  critical  powers,  yet  of  narrow 
intellectual  vision.  '  He  spied  out  defects  with  the 
microscopic  eye  of  an  insect,  but  the  merits  which 
he  prized  were  nice  and  contracted  also.' 

His  birthplace  encouraged  his  intellectual  tem- 
perament. He  was  born  of  Arab  stock  at  Basra  in 
1055,  and  died  there  in  1122.  He  celebrates  his 
native  city  as  the  place  where  'the  ship  and  the 
camel  meet,  the  seafish  and  the  lizard.'  But 
besides  being  the  chief  Mesopotamian  mart  for 
the  commerce  between  east  and  west,  Basra  was 
the  home  of  literary  subtlety ;  where,  more  than 
anywhere  else  under  the  Caliphate,  there  was 
everlasting  'grinding  at  grammar,'  making  of 
anagrams,  devising  of  conceits,  and  all  manner 
of  poetastrical  pedantry.  When  one  of  its  most 
famous  scholars  lay  dying,  his  friends  gathered 
round  to  catch  his  last  wishes ;  but  the  learned 
Sibawaih  could  only  gasp  out,  'There  is  some- 
thing on  my  mind  concerning  the  particle  hatta  !  ' 
— One  thinks  of  him  who 

Gave  us  the  doctrine  of  the  enclitic  3e, 
Dead  from  the  waist  down. 

Bred  up  in  this  straitest  sect  of  the  grammarians, 
Hariri's  undoubted  genius  for  style  was  polished  to 
its  finest  edge,  and  his  learning  was  widened  to  the 
bounds  of  the  scholarly  horizon.  His  greatest 
work,  the  '  Assemblies,'  is  indeed  (as  Dr  Steingass 
has  well  observed)  an  encyclopaedia  of  the  scholar- 
ship of  his  time  and  race,  set  forth   in  language 


g6  Among  My  Books 

saturated  with  the  idioms  of  the  classical  poets,  the 
Koran,  and  the  proverbs  of  the  desert.  It  is  this 
which  makes  it  so  valuable  a  text-book  for  the 
student  of  Arabic.  Here  he  will  find  poetry,  his- 
tory, antiquities,  theology,  law ;  he  will  be  intro- 
duced to  every  branch  of  Mohammedan  learning  ; 
whilst  for  niceties  of  grammar,  rhetoric,  and  lexi- 
cology he  could  have  no  surer  guide.  Dr  Steingass 
has  conferred  a  great  benefit  on  students  by  the 
publication  of  a  convenient  text  of  the  *  Assemblies 
of  Hariri '  elucidated  by  very  necessary  notes,  based 
upon  the  labours  of  Sacy  and  Chenery,  whose  trans- 
lation he  has  also  completed. 

It  is  difficult,  no  doubt,  for  most  Westerns  to 
appreciate  the  beauties  of  this  celebrated  classic. 
There  is  no  cohesion,  no  connecting  idea,  between 
the  fifty  separate  *  Assemblies,'  beyond  the  regular 
re-appearance  of  an  egregious  Tartufe,  called  Abu- 
Zeyd,  a  Bohemian  of  brilliant  parts  and  absolutely 
no  conscience,  who  consistently  extracts  alms  from 
assemblies  of  people  in  various  cities,  by  preaching 
eloquent  discourses  of  the  highest  piety  and  moral- 
ity, and  then  goes  off  with  his  spoils  to  indulge 
secretly  in  triumphant  and  unhallowed  revels. 
Preston  has  summed  up  the  intellectual  character 
of  this  fascinating  hero  of  the  '  Assemblies ' : — 
'  Eloquent  and  erratic,  like  the  hero  of  the  Odyssey, 
roaming  from  place  to  place  with  no  means  of  sup- 
port except  his  marvellous  powers  of  language,  nor 
any  object  except  the  display  of  them,  restless  if 
without  an  opportunity  of  exerting  them,  but  care- 


An  Arab  Classic  97 

less  from  the  very  confidence  of  success  about  em- 
ploying them  in  a  settled  direction,  devoting  them 
sometimes  to  the  noblest  and  sometimes  to  the 
meanest  purposes,  yet  never  losing  sight  of  the 
dignity  of  their  possession,  but  applying  them  to 
foil  the  learned,  to  cajole  the  simple,  to  baffle  the 
powerful,  and  to  defraud  the  humane.' 

Even  in  this  framework  there  is  no  attempt  at 
originality ;  it  is  borrowed  from  Hamadhani,  the 
*  Wonder  of  the  Age.'  The  excellence  lies  in  the 
perfect  finish  :  the  matter  is  nothing ;  the  charm 
consists  in  the  form  alone.  Yet  this  form  is,  to 
English  readers,  exotic  and  artificial.  Among  its 
special  merits,  in  the  eyes  of  Easterns,  is  the  per- 
petual employment  of  rhymed  prose.  To  us  this 
is  apt  to  seem  at  once  monotonous  and  strained, 
with  its  antithetic  balance  in  sense,  and  jingle  of 
sound ;  but  to  the  Arabs,  as  to  many  primitive 
peoples,  either  rhyming  or  assonant  prose  was 
from  early  times  a  natural  mode  of  impassioned 
and  impressive  speech.  It  is  the  mode  adopted 
constantly  and  without  strain  in  the  Koran,  and 
it  is  the  mode  into  which  an  historian,  such  as 
Ibn-el-Athir,  falls  naturally  when  he  waxes  elo- 
quent over  a  great  victory  or  a  famous  deed.  The 
Arabic  language,  with  its  mathematical  regularity 
of  structure  and  resulting  assonances,  lends  itself 
easily  to  this  art  of  expression,  and  what  to  us 
seems  laboured  and  affected  was  undoubtedly  pro- 
duced without  effort  by  the  writer ;  indeed,  it  is 
the  commonest  thing  to  hear  the  weekly  sermon 

G 


98  Among  My  Books 

in  the  mosque   delivered   ex  tempore  in  rhyming 
prose. 

But  if  we  do  not  care  for  rhymed  prose,  there 
is  plenty  besides  in  Hariri  to  minister  to  varied 
tastes.  In  these  wonderful  '  Assemblies '  we  shall 
find  every  kind  of  literary  form,  except  the  sham- 
bling and  the  vulgar.  Pagan  rhetoric,  Muslim 
exhortation,  simple  verse,  elaborate  ode,  everything 
that  the  immeasurable  flexibility  of  the  Arabic 
tongue  and  the  curious  art  of  a  fastidious  scholar 
could  achieve — all  is  here,  and  we  may  take  our 
choice.  But  the  strangest  thing  about  Hariri  was 
his  profession.  The  greatest  master  of  Arabic 
style  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  a  Sdhib  al-Khabar. 
Now  S^hib  al-Khabar,  being  freely  interpreted, 
means — our  own  correspondent ! 


XV  . 

UNCONSCIOUS  MAGIC 

BY  ARTHUR  MACHEN 

THE  facsimile  page  of  Lord  Tennyson's 
handwriting  in  the  second  volume  of  the 
*  Memoir '  gives  us  some  curious  information  as  to 
the  symbolism  of  the  *  Idylls/  By  the  '  Round 
Table,'  it  seems,  we  are  to  understand  '  Liberal 
Institutions,'  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  to  some 
of  us  the  interpretation  is  not  a  little  terrifying. 
No  doubt  the  poet  would  not  have  had  us  take  his 
words  in  their  strictly  literal  sense ;  we  are  not  for 
the  future  to  read  into  his  lines  references  to  Equal 
Electoral  Districts,  Payment  of  Members  and  the 
County  Council,  but  from  the  high  and  mystic 
order  of  the  Round  Table  to  *  Liberal  Institutions ' 
in  their  mildest  form  there  is  surely  a  frightful  and 
abominable  descent.  I  may  admit  at  once  that 
Tennyson  never  meant  us  to  associate  a  *  Program ' 
of  any  kind  with  Lancelot ;  that  we  are  free  to 
enjoy  the  session  of  the  holy  knights  without  a 
thought  of  Local  Veto  ;  and  yet,  when  every  allow- 


loo  Among  My  Books 

ance  has  been  made,  those  of  us  who  had  dreamed 
of  something  ineffable  beneath  the  sacrament  of 
the  words  are  left  chilled  and  desolate  by  the  poet's 
explanation.  We  will  give  the  most  favourable 
gloss  to  the  phrase,  and  confess  how  good  and 
joyful  a  thing  it  is  that  brethren  should  dwell  to- 
gether in  unity,  under  equal  laws,  ruled  by  noble 
kings,  while  freedom  broadens  slowly  down  from 
precedent  to  precedent ;  but  still,  I,  for  one,  must 
say  at  the  last  that  I  have  lost  my  earlier  heaven. 
Wordsworth  could  be  prosaic,  even  to  absolute 
bathos,  but  he  never  paraphrased  'heaven  lies 
about  us  in  our  infancy '  by  *  wholesome  maternal 
influences  surround  us  in  our  childhood.'  Let  us 
make  the  distinction  once  for  all ;  the  important 
things  of  life  are  to  the  poets  foolishness  ;  freedom, 
justice,  equal  laws,  all  that  lights  the  cheerful  glow 
of  our  household  fires,  are  but  dead  ashes  when  we 
look  through  the  magic  casements  and  behold  the 
knights  arrayed,  and  the  glory  streaming  from  the 
Vessel  of  the  Grail.  We  do  not  wish  to  be  told 
then  that  the  Magic  Bark  symbolises  increased 
facilities  of  locomotion.  Clearly,  if  Tennyson  knew 
what  he  meant  we  are  betrayed  and  undone ;  while 
we  thought  the  poet  had  been  chanting  to  us  of 
certain  awful  and  hidden  things,  he  has  really 
been  expounding  the  principles  of  an  amiable 
Whiggery ;  the  enchanted  towers  of  Carbonek 
shrivel  up  into  a  Mechanics'  Institute. 

But  did  Tennyson  know  what  he  meant  ?     The 
question  sounds  an  impertinence,  but  it  must  be 


Unconscious  Magic  ;   loi 

asked  quite  seriously  not  only  of  Tennyson,  but  of 
many  other  great  writers.  Perhaps  if  we  could 
have  examined  Cervantes  and  asked  him  the  true 
significance  of  the  '  Don  Quixote/  he  would  have 
told  us  in  all  sobriety  that  it  was  nothing  more  than 
a  satire  on  the  foolish  books  of  Knight-errantry 
then  in  fashion.  It  seems  highly  probable  that 
he  would  have  made  some  such  answer ;  through- 
out his  book  he  insists  that  his  object  was  merely 
to  reform  a  current  perversity  of  literary  taste. 
And  Rabelais  too — he  would  not  have  hesitated, 
we  may  be  sure,  if  one  could  have  taken  him  apart 
and  inquired  into  the  meaning  of  his  magic- 
lantern  visions,  as  Coleridge  calls  them.  He  would 
have  remembered  the  evil  days  in  the  convent  of 
Fontenay-le-Comte,  the  ignorance,  the  bigotry,  the 
brutality  of  the  Greyfriars,  and  no  doubt  he  would 
have  replied  that  in  *  Gargantua '  and  *  Pantagruel ' 
he  had  wished  to  express  his  hatred  of  *  clericalism ' 
and  monks  and  monastic  rules.     Sterne  set  out  on 

*  Tristram  Shandy '  with  the  idea  of  laughing  at 
some  local  enemies ;  Dickens  tells  how  he  began 

*  Pickwick '  in  order  that  Seymour  might  have  a 
text  for  his  pictures  of  Cockney  sportsmen,  how  he 
continued  it  so  that  bribery  and  corruption  at 
elections,  unscrupulous  attorneys,  and  Fleet  Prison 
should  be  no  more.  Hawthorne  was  in  a  way  a 
conscious  mystic,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  he 
realised  how  small  a  part  is  borne  by  the  moral 
tragedy  in  the  grand  achievement  of  the  *  Scarlet 
Letter.' 


;io-2  Among  My  Books 

Did  they  know  what  they  meant  ?  I  will  return 
to  my  first  example  of  the  late  poet  laureate  with 
his  '  Liberal  Institutions,'  and  so  far  as  he  and  his 
symbolism  are  concerned,  I  answer  '  No '  at  once, 
and  without  hesitation.  It  is  true  that  we  cannot 
say  in  words  what  we  seek  as  we  go  down  to 
Camelot,  we  know  not  how  it  may  be  when  the 
trumpet  sounds  and  the  Knights  of  the  Round 
Table  are  gathered  together,  we  bow  in  silence  at 
the  Elevation  of  the  Grail.  It  does  not  yet  appear 
what  these  things  signify.  But  we  do  know  that 
while  we  read  the  '  Idylls'  our  attitude  of  mind 
is  wholly  mystical,  that  our  hearts  lie  stilled  under 
enchantment,  that  we  are  never  troubled  by  the 
thought  of  any  *  institutions,'  however  valuable  such 
things  may  be  in  themselves.  To  us,  indeed,  it 
must  seem  astounding  that  Tennyson  should 
resolve  our  doubts  in  such  a  manner,  but  our 
amazement  would  perhaps  be  less  if  we  could  have 
breathed  the  atmosphere  of  the  'thirties  with  the 
poet.  Then,  as  in  the  early  time  of  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  as  through  all  the  days  of  Shelley, 
*  poetical'  and  'political'  seemed  almost  synony- 
mous adjectives,  and  Mr  Snodgrass,  the  *  great 
poet,'  spoke  quite  in  character  when  he  alluded  to 
the  Revolution  of  July  as  'that  glorious  scene.' 
They  thought  highly  of  '  Freedom '  in  those  days, 
not  quite  knowing  what  they  meant,  not  at  all 
understanding  that  the  word  usually  stands  for 
jobbery  and  corruption  of  the  most  offensive  sort, 
and  perhaps  the  mistiness  of  the  conception  made 


Unconscious  Magic  103 

it  glamorous  and  poetical.  I  am  thankful  that 
Keats  did  not  explain  his  poetry.  Perhaps  if  he 
had  done  so  he  would  have  told  us  that  by  '  faery 
lands  forlorn'  he  meant  to  signify  the  countries 
oppressed  by  the  Holy  Alliance  and  the  Roman 
Pontiff. 

And  perhaps  the  case  becomes  stronger  if  I 
leave  Tennyson  and  pass  to  others.  For  though 
we  have  the  unimpeachable  evidence  of  the  poet's 
handwriting  as  to  the  fact  of  his  interpretation, 
yet  I,  at  all  events,  cannot  quite  believe  that  the 
Parliamentary  ideal  was  in  his  mind  as  he  wrote 
the  great  lines  of  the  *  Idylls.'  It  was  probably  an 
afterthought,  or  perhaps  a  forethought,  but  not  the 
palmary  thought  of  the  creative  moment.  With 
Cervantes,  however,  it  is  different.  Again  and 
again  he  interrupts  the  splendid  passage  of  his 
knight  to  assure  the  reader  that  he  means  no  more 
than  a  little  satire — that  his  only  object  is  to  write 
down  those  tedious  romances  of  chivalry.  In 
literature  all  things  are  conjectural,  but,  if  any- 
thing is  certain,  one  may  be  sure  that  Cervantes 
meant '  Don  Quixote '  to  be  a  burlesque  on  Amadis 
and  Belianis,  and  the  rest  of  them ;  he  intended  the 
best  book  in  profane  letters  to  be  a  '  skit,'  as  we 
should  call  it.  It  will  be  hardly  necessary  to  show 
at  length  how  much  more  the  author  accomplished, 
how  utterly  nonsensical  is  the  line  about  laughing 
Spain's  chivalry  away.  To  me  it  seems  that 
Cervantes  distilled  as  into  a  quintessence  all  the 
marvel  and  wonder  and  awe  of  chivalry ;  that  even 


104  Among  My  Books 

the '  Morte  d' Arthur '  is  contained  in  '  Don  Quixote' 
as  the  less  in  the  greater ;  that  this  masterpiece  is 
one  of  those  books  written  within  and  without.  To 
the  gross  eye,  to  the  formal  understanding,  it  is  a 
witty  history  of  comic  misadventure,  but  the  elect 
listen  through  its  golden  pages  to  the  winding  of 
King  Arthur's  magic  horn,  to  the  chant  of  the 
choir  that  guards  the  Grail. 

My  original  question  was,  perhaps,  too  harshly 
framed  ;  I  will  not  ask  *  Did  they  know  what  they 
meant  ? '  but  rather  inquire  as  to  how  far  the  fine 
and  rare  effects  of  literature  were  consciously  de- 
vised and  produced.  As  has  been  stated,  there 
cannot  be  much  doubt  as  to  the  intention  of 
Rabelais  in  inventing  his  extraordinary  book.  He 
willed  to  run  a  tilt  at  things  in  general — to  please 
the  vulgar  with  vulgar  words  and  obscene  tales — 
but,  above  all,  to  render  the  Church  and  the  monks 
hateful  and  contemptible.  And  how  little  this 
counts  with  the  enlightened  Rabelaisian  of  to-day. 
It  is  true  that  the  baser  bookseller  catalogues  the 
volume  with  *  Maria  Monk '  and  '  Fast  Life  in 
Paris';  it  is  true  that  the  more  inept  critics  are  not 
resolved  whether  Brother  John  be  a  '  type  of  the 
Christian  Soldier '  or  *  a  good  man  spoiled  by  the 
monastic  discipline ' ;  whether  Panurge  be  the 
*  careful  portrait  of  a  man  without  a  soul,'  or 
merely  a  personification  of  the  Renaissance. 
But  the  initiated  heed  nothing  of  all  this.  They 
see  the  Tourainian  sun  shine  on  the  hot  rock 
above   Chinon,   on    the   maze  of  narrow   mount- 


Unconscious  Magic  105 

ing  streets,  on  the  high-pitched  roofs,  on  the 
grey-blue  tourelles  pricking  upwards  from  the 
fantastic  labyrinth  of  walls.  There  is  the  sound  of 
sonorous  plainsong  from  the  monastic  choir,  of 
gross  exuberant  gaiety  from  the  vineyards  by  the 
river;  one  listens  to  the  eternal  mystic  mirth  of 
them  that  rest  in  the  purple  shadow  by  the  white, 
climbing  road.  The  gracious  and  ornate  chateaux 
on  the  Loire  and  the  Vienne  rise  fair  and  shining 
to  confront  the  incredible  secrets  of  dim,  far  lifted 
Gothic  naves,  that  seem  ready  to  take  the  great 
deep  and  float  away  from  the  mist  and  dust  of 
earthly  towns  to  anchor  in  the  haven  of  the  clear 
city  that  hath  foundations ;  the  rank  tale  of  the 
garderobe,  of  the  farm  kitchen,  mingles  with  the 
reasoned,  endless  legend  of  the  Schools,  with 
luminous  Platonic  argument,  with  the  spring  of  a 
fresh  life.  There  is  a  smell  of  wine  and  of  incense, 
of  flowers  and  of  ancient  books  ;  and  through  it  all 
there  is  the  exultation  of  chiming  bells  ringing  for 
a  new  feast  in  a  new  land.  For  my  part,  I  care 
very  little  whether  Rabelais  has  overdrawn  the 
depravity  of  the  monastic  orders,  or  whether 
Brother  John  was  indeed  spoiled  by  cloistral 
discipline. 

We  may  go  far  afield  and  search  the  most  distant 
ages  and  authors  grotesquely  unlike  to  one  another, 
and  yet  we  shall  come  to  the  same  conclusion, 
that  the  casket  alone  was  designed,  that  the  jewel 
slipped  in  unawares.  From  the  England  of  the 
Middle  Ages  to  the   New  England  of  the  Uni- 


io6  Among  My  Books 

tarians  there  is  a  far  way.  But  Chaucer  desired  to 
tell  amusing  and  gallant  tales,  not  thinking  at  all 
of  the  great  and  gorgeous  tapestry  that  his  rich 
words  were  weaving,  of  the  full  descant  to  which 
one  sets  every  line  he  wrote.  And  Hawthorne, 
though  a  more  conscious  artist,  scarcely  understood 
that  his  puritan  village  tragedy  but  glimmers  in 
the  light  of  Sabbath  fires,  in  the  red  air  of  super- 
natural suggestion  which  he  wrought  around  it ; 
the  figure  is  hardly  discernible  in  the  midst  of  its 
radiant  and  terrible  aureole.  I  have  pointed  out 
how  Dickens  began  a  common  task,  and  at  the  end 
of  it  congratulated  himself  and  his  readers  on 
the  gradual  reformation  of  the  abuses  which  he  had 
attacked  ;  but  I  cannot  discover  in  any  part  that 
Dickens  realised  how  in  *  Pickwick '  he  had  written 
perhaps  the  last  romance  of  the  picaro  that  the 
world  will  ever  see,  that  he  had  closed  a  great 
canon  of  literature.  In  '  Pickwick,'  though  the 
author  understood  nothing  of  it,  we  follow  our  hero 
into  the  unknown,  with  the  wonder  and  charm  and 
the  laughter,  though  not  with  the  awe,  with  which 
we  followed  *  Don  Quixote '  as  he  rode  towards  the 
enchanted  land  of  his  desire,  we  relish  probably  for 
the  last  time  the  joy  of  the  winding  of  the  lane,  the 
thought  of  what  lies  beyond  the  wood  and  the  hill, 
the  surmise  of  the  company  that  will  gather  in  the 
ancient  galleried  inn.  And  Dickens,  reviewing  his 
book,  parleys  with  us  of  the  license  of  Counsel,  of 
Poor  Laws — prophesies  the  School  Board  even  ! 
Literature  is  full  of  secrets,  but  perhaps  it  offers 


Unconscious  Magic  107 

no  stranger  matter  for  our  consideration  than 
melodies  unheard  by  those  that  made  them,  than 
Siren  songs  that  never  came  to  the  Sirens'  ears. 
The  magicians  have  murmured  strong  spells  and 
most  powerful  evocations,  but  like  the  Coptic 
priests,  they  have  hardly  or  not  at  all  understood 
the  words  of  might. 


XVI 
REMINISCENCES  OF  ^  LEWIS  CARROLL' 

BY  LIONEL  A.  TOLLEMACHE 

THE  obituary  notices  of  the  man  of  genius 
who  is  best  known  as  the  literary  father 
of  the  Alices  have  agreed  in  calling  attention  to 
one  great  peculiarity  which  marked  him.  His 
mind  had  a  twofold  activity.  He  might  be 
described — of  course  mutatis  mutandis  et  minutis 
minuendis — as  made  up  of  ^sop  and  Euclid  fused 
together,  somewhat  as  Dr  Jekyll  and  Mr  Hyde 
were  fused  together.  To  speak  more  precisely : 
as  a  mathematician,  he  did  his  work  well ;  as  a 
romancist,  admirably.  The  intellectual  athlete  who 
kept  his  balance  on  the  rugged  and  bewildering 
heights  of  Conic  Sections  and  Determinants  could 
freely  disport  himself  in  what  I  would  call  a  waking- 
dreamland^  a  land  whose  phantasmagoria 

Of  shoes  and  ships  and  sealing-wax 
And  cabbages  and  kings 

was  interspersed  with  such  veritable  lusus  simper- 


no  Among  My  Books 

naturalitatis  as  pedestrian  Oysters  and  plaintive 
Mockturtles.  So  that  haply  he  might  (in  a  novel 
sense)  have  taken  for  his  motto  :  Valet  ima  suinmis 
Mutare.  But  the  point  to  note  is  that  his  intellect, 
vigorous  and  versatile  on  these  oddly  remote  and 
dissimilar  levels,  was  unwieldy  on  intermediate 
levels.  He  could  soar  and  dive  far  better  than  he 
could  walk.  This  may  partly  account  for  his  un- 
readiness in  conversation.  Not,  indeed,  that  he 
was  unable  at  times  to  talk  brilliantly.  With  his 
ready  command  of  homely  and  witty  illustrations, 
he  could  hardly  fail  to  achieve  this.  Indeed,  I 
have  obtained  distinct  testimony  on  the  point  from 
one  of  his  intimate  friends,  who  writes : 

*  Of  his  brilliancy  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt ; 
but  it  was  at  the  same  time  very  difficult  to  define  or 
focus.  You  ask  me  for  some  of  his  brilliant  flashes.  I 
am  quite  unable  to  give  you  any.  All  he  said,  all  his 
oddities  and  clever  things,  arose  out  of  the  conversa- 
tion— conversation  quite  of  an  ordinary  everyday  sort  ; 
to  explain  it  at  all  you  would  want  shorthand  notes  of 
everything  that  was  said,  and  even  then  you  would 
not  follow  it,  unless  you  knew  the  people  who  were 
talking,  the  peculiarities  of  this  man,  and  the  deafness 
of  that,  and  so  on.  It  was  just  Alice,  all  kinds  of 
queer  terms  given  to  things.  You  never  knew  where 
he  would  take  you  next;  and  all  the  while  there 
seemed  to  be  an  odd  logical  sequence,  almost  impell- 
ing your  assent  to  most  unexpected  conclusions.  He 
had  a  great  fund  of  stories  ;  these  again  were  never 
told  independently,  they  were  fished  up  from  his 
stores  by  some  line  dropped  down  in  ordinary  talk. 


Reminiscences  of '  Lewis  Carroll '     1 1 1 

He  always  said  he  never  invented  them  (and  my  own 
impression  is  that  he  did  not),  but  that  they  had  been 
read  somewhere  or  told  him  by  someone.  He  never 
told  stories  against  people,  was  never  bitter  or  cruel, 
never  attempted  to  *'  score  "  off  others  ! '  * 

But,  though  sometimes  a  brilliant,  Dodgson  was 
not  a  steady,  or  what  may  be  termed  a  safe  talker. 
He  could  not  be  relied  on  to  bear  his  part  in  the 
give-and-take  of  serious  conversation ;  and  (so  to 
say)  to  keep  the  shuttlecock  flying  at  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  convenient  height.  Indeed,  the 
greatest  praise  which  his  most  partial  friends  could 
claim  for  him  as  a  talker  would  be  that  which 
Wellington  bestowed  on  Talleyrand,  namely,  that 
he  was  generally  dull,  but  now  and  then  said 
things  which  his  hearers  would  never  forget.  Thus, 
then,  we  may  conclude  that  he  had  no  eye  for  the 

*  It  may  be  instructive  to  contrast  the  view  of  Dodgson's  con- 
versational powers  which  finds  expression  in  this  interesting  letter 
with  the  view  taken  by  another  of  his  friends,  a  man  of  science. 
The  latter  tells  me  that,  to  his  thinking,  Dodgson  was  not  a  brilliant 
talker  ;  he  was  too  peculiar  and  paradoxical ;  and  the  topics  on 
which  he  loved  to  dwell  were  such  as  would  bore  many  persons  ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  when  he  himself  was  not  interested,  he 
occasionally  stopped  the  flow  of  a  serious  discussion  by  the  intrusion 
of  a  disconcerting  epigram.  At  first  1  was  taken  aback  by  this 
glaring  discrepancy  of  opinion.  But  on  second  thoughts  I  am 
tempted,  though  with  the  utmost  diffidence,  to  suggest  a  partial  ex- 
planation. Let  me  state,  then,  that  the  correspondent  from  whom  I 
have  quoted  is  orthodox,  whereas  my  scientific  friend  inclines 
towards  modern  views.  Now,  I  suspect  that  Dodgson's  pleasantry, 
however  seemingly  extravagant,  had  a  method  in  it,  and  that,  even 
if  none  of  his  paradoxes  had  (like  those  of  Mansel)  a  more  or  less 
clearly-defined  theological  purpose,  at  anyrate  his  wit  would  play 
with  the  greatest  ease  and  effect  among  orthodox  and  sympathetic 
listeners.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  among  such  listeners  his  sallies 
would  be  rated  at  less  than  their  full  value.  As  a  general  rule, 
orthodoxy  combined  with  brilliancy  is  like  glycerine  combined  with 
vaccine — it  enables  a  little  of  it  to  go  a  very  long  way  ! 


1 1 2  Among  My  Books 

middle-distance  of  the  intellectual  landscape.  The 
lower  generalisations  of  philosophy  and  the  higher 
generalisations  of  daily  experience,  which  together 
form  the  common  ground  where  men  of  parts  and 
men  without  parts  can  freely  meet  and  converse — 
these  axiomata  media  of  discourse  were  almost  a 
sealed,  were  (let  us  say)  an  uncut^  book  to  our 
mathematical  romancist. 

He  was,  indeed,  addicted  to  mathematical  and 
sometimes  to  ethical  paradoxes.  The  following 
specimen  was  propounded  by  him  in  my  presence. 
Suppose  that  I  toss  up  a  coin  on  the  condition 
that,  if  I  throw  heads  once,  I  am  to  receive  aid; 
if  twice  in  succession,  an  additional  dole  of  2d ; 
if  thrice,  a  further  addition  of  4d ;  and  so  on, 
doubling  for  each  successful  toss :  what  is  the  value 
of  my  prospects?  The  amazing  reply  is  that  it 
amounts  to  infinity ;  for,  as  the  profit  attached  to 
each  successful  toss  increases  in  exact  proportion 
as  the  chance  of  success  diminishes,  the  value  (so 
to  say)  of  each  toss  will  be  identical,  being  in  fact 
a  Jd  ;  so  that  the  value  of  an  infinite  number  of 
tosses  is  an  infinite  number  of  half-pence.  Yet,  in 
fact,  would  any  one  give  me  sixpence  for  my 
prospect?  This,  concluded  Dodgson,  shows  how 
far  our  conduct  is  from  being  determined  by  logic. 
The  only  comment  that  I  will  offer  on  his  astound- 
ing paradox  is  that,  in  order  to  bring  out  his  result, 
we  must  suppose  a  somewhat  monotonous  eternity 
to  be  consumed  in  the  tossing  process. 

He   told  me  of  a  simple,  too   simple,  rule   by 


Reminiscences  of '  Lewis  Carroll  *     113 

which,  he  thought,  one  could  be  almost  sure  of 
making  something  at  a  horse-race.  He  had  on 
various  occasions  noted  down  the  fractions  which 
represented  the  supposed  chances  of  the  competing 
horses,  and  had  observed  that  the  sum  of  those 
chances  amounted  to  more  than  unity.  Hence  he 
inferred  that,  even  in  the  case  of  such  hard-headed 
men  as  the  backers,  the  wish  is  often  father  to  the 
thought ;  so  that  they  are  apt  to  overrate  the 
chances  of  their  favourites.  His  plan,  therefore, 
was — Bet  against  all  the  horses,  keeping  your  own 
stake  the  same  in  each  case.  He  did  not  pretend 
to  know  much  about  horse-racing,  and  I  probably 
know  even  less  ;  but  I  understand  that  it  would  be 
impossible  to  adjust  the  *  hedging'  with  sufficient 
exactitude — in  fact,  to  get  bets  of  the  right  amount 
taken  by  the  backers. 

Two  other  'dodges'  of  his  may  be  mentioned 
here.  He  said  that,  if  a  dull  writer  sent  you  a  copy 
of  his  books,  you  should  at  once  write  and  thank 
him,  and  should  add,  with  delphic  ambiguity, 
that  you  will  lose  no  time  in  perusing  them  !  Being 
a  strict  moralist,  he  must  assuredly  have  meant  so 
palpable  an  equivocation  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
jeu  d'esprit.  He  was  doubtless  more  serious  in 
asserting  that,  whenever  a  mother  held  up  an 
uncomely  infant  for  his  inspection,  he  met  her  wist- 
ful gaze  with  the  exclamation,  *  He  is  a  baby ! ' 
Might  not  Falconbridge  have  condoned  such  an 
evasion  in  extremis  as  being,  at  worst,  *  a  virtuous 
sin '  ?     To  be  frank  would  be  a  mortal  offence  ;  and 

H 


114  Among  My  Books 

to  avert  such  a  mishap,  one  might  be  tempted  to 
invoke  a  principle  which  assuredly  could  not  be 
extended  to  all  cases — '  Salus  amiciticBy  s  uprema 
lex.'  Better  this  than  to  set  up  the  more  widely 
applicable  and  therefore  more  abusable  plea — *  De 
minimis  non  curat  moralitas' 

Dodgson  had  an  ingenious  memoria  technica  to 
impress  and  illustrate  Harmonic  Progression.  Ac- 
cording to  him,  it  is  (or  was)  the  rule  at  Christ 
Church  that,  if  an  undergraduate  is  absent  for  a 
night  during  term-time  without  leave,  he  is  for  the 
first  offence  sent  down  for  a  term  ;  if  he  commits 
the  offence  a  second  time,  he  is  sent  down  for  two 
terms ;  if  a  third  time,  Christ  Church  knows  him 
no  more.  This  last  calamity  Dodgson  designated 
as  '  infinite.'  Here,  then,  the  three  degrees  of 
punishment  may  be  reckoned  as  i,  2,  infinity. 
These  three  figures  represent  three  terms  in  an 
ascending  series  of  Harmonic  Progression,  being 
the  counterparts  of  i,  |,  o,  which  are  three  terms  in 
a  descending  Arithmetical  Progression. 

After  the  foregoing  manifestations  of  the  riddling 
spirit  which  possessed  this  (ttoikiXmSo^)  Oxonian 
Sphinx,  we  are  not  surprised  to  learn  that,  though 
he  generally  delighted  children,  he  has  been  known 
to  bore  them  with  arithmetical  puzzles.  Also,  his 
favourites  sometimes  complained  that  his  interest 
in  them  passed  away  with  their  childhood.  He 
related  to  me  a  quaint  incident,  which  is  said  to  be 
highly  characteristic  of  him.  He  mentioned  that 
he  took  no  great  interest  in  little  boys,  and  that 


Reminiscences  of  *  Lewis  Carroll '     115 

once,  on  receiving  a  letter  from  a  child  with  a 
hermaphrodite  name,  either  Sydney  or  Evelyn,  he 
supposed  the  writer  to  be  a  boy,  and  answered 
somewhat  curtly.  Learning  afterwards  that  his 
small  correspondent  was  a  girl,  he  made  his  peace 
by  writing  to  her  with  great  cordiality  and  with  a 
mock-serious  playfulness.  His  letter  contained  an 
injunction  to  the  following  effect : — '  If  you  see 
Nobody  coming  into  the  room,  please  give  him  a 
kiss  from  me.'  Was  he  prompted  thus  to  personify 
Nobody  by  the  recollection  of  a  famous  scene  in 
the  '  Odyssey '  ?  At  all  events,  being  sorely  per- 
plexed as  to  the  manner  of  bestowing  a  ghostly 
embrace  on  visible  and  incarnate  nothingness,  the 
poor  child  naively  acknowledged  her  embarrass- 
ment in  a  letter  which  she  wrote  to  her  enigmatical 
monitor,  and  which  he  kindly  read  aloud  to  me. 

He  spoke  of  the  difficulties  which  he  had  to 
encounter  before  his  '  Alice '  could  make  her  ap- 
pearance on  the  stage.  Especially  he  dwelt  on  the 
corrections  which  were  needed  in  '  The  Walrus  and 
the  Carpenter.'  His  intention  had  been  that  this 
farcical  interlude  should  be  represented  in  its 
original  form.  But  he  discovered  that  the  tranquil 
massacre  of  the  oysters  was  a  catastrophe  too  tame 
for  dramatic  effect.  Thereupon  he  conceived  the 
happy  thought  of  making  the  ghosts  of  the  victims 
jump  on  the  sleeping  forms  of  their  assassins,  and 
give  them  bad  dreams.  With  pardonable — or 
rather  with  amiable — vanity  he  informed  me  that 
the  spirit  shown  by  the  defunct  oysters  in  inflicting 


1 1 6  Among  My  Books 


this  (somewhat  mild)  retaliation  drew  loud  applause 
from  the  spedtators. 

Owing  to  the  immense  popularity  of  this  fable 
without  a  moral,  or  with  a  queer  moral  (for,  in  very- 
truth,  the  loquacious  and  companionable  oysters 
are  more  like  children  bewitched  into  the  shape  of 
oysters),  I  am  tempted  to  make,  or  rather  repeat,  a 
minute  criticism  upon  it.  Referring  to  the  form  in 
which  it  was  originally  written,  I  asked  its  author 
about  its  concluding  stanza,  and  especially  about 
the  line — '  Shall  we  be  trotting  home  again  ? '  The 
humorous  fatuity  of  this  line,  addressed  as  it  is  to 
the  eaten  oysters,  would  assuredly  tally  far  better 
with  the  unctuous  and  gratuitous  wheedling  of  the 
Walrus  than  with  the  commonplace  bluntness  of 
the  Carpenter ;  why,  then,  is  it  put  into  the  Car- 
penter's mouth  ?  Dodgson  frankly  owned  that  the 
objection  had  never  occurred  to  him.  He  said 
something  about  the  number  of  syllables  in  the 
first  line  of  the  stanza,  but  he  presently  remarked 
that  this  line  might  be  written,  '  O  Oysters  dear, 
the  Walrus  said.'  On  the  whole,  he  left  on  my 
mind  the  impression  that,  if  he  had  woven  anew 
the  quaintly  and  brilliantly  variegated  threads  of 
the  threefold  wondertale  of  Alice  (Tergeminam 
Aliciam^  tria  virginis  or  a  creavit),  this  trifling 
blemish  in  its  best-remembered  and  oftenest-quoted 
episode  would  possibly  have  been  removed.  Si 
nulla  est,  tauten  excute  7iullam. 

My  sketch  of  '  Lewis  Carroll '  would  be  incom- 
plete if  I  made  no  mention  of  his  solicitude  to  avoid 


Reminiscences  of  '  Lewis  Carroll  ^      117 

every  form  of  pleasantry  which  could  possibly  give 
offence.  Everybody  remembers  the  triumphant 
conclusion  of '  Alice  in  the  Looking-Glass.'  After 
not  a  few  singular  adventures,  the  heroine  crosses  a 
fateful  stream  ;  whereupon  a  crown  is  set  on  her 
head ;  and,  entering  a  stately  mansion,  she  is  wel- 
comed with  the  rejoicings  of  her  friends,  rejoicings 
which  are  in  no  wise  lessened  by  the  infliction  of  a 
sudden  and  severe,  if  not  capricious,  punishment  on 
a  member  of  the  opposite  party.  All  this,  ever  since 
my  first  perusal  of  the  book,  has  reminded  me  of 
the  closing  scene  of  that  favourite  of  my  boyhood, 
*  The  Pilgrim's  Progress.'  I  mentioned  this  associa- 
tion of  ideas  to  Dodgson  ;  and  I  let  him  divine  my 
curiosity  to  know  whether  the  coincidence  was  un- 
designed. He  took  the  matter  more  seriously  than 
I  had  expected.  With  evident  annoyance,  he 
assured  me  that  the  thought  of  imitating  Bunyan 
had  never  occurred  to  him ;  such  trespassing  on 
sacred  ground  would  have  seemed  to  him  highly 
irreverent ;  and,  sooner  than  be  guilty  of  that 
irreverence,  he  would  have  re-written  this  portion 
of  the  book.  At  the  same  time,  he  acknowledged 
that  he  had  nearly  been  betrayed  into  an  oversight 
which  he  would  have  regretted  exceedingly.  Mill 
was  once  provoked  into  saying  that  a  certain  wise 
man  was  remarkable,  not  only  for  seeing  what 
ordinary  men  could  not  see,  but  also  for  not  see- 
ing what  they  could  see.  It  was  with  a  some- 
what similar  sense  of  anomaly  and  incongruity 
that   I   learnt  that,  without  the  least  suspicion  of 


ii8  Among  My  Books 

profanity,  such  an  accomplished  man  as  Dodgson 
had,  in  the  first  draft  of  *  Alice  in  Wonderland,' 
made  the  passion-flower  do  duty  for  a  flower  in  a 
passion.  Fortunately  he  showed  the  manuscript  to 
a  lady  friend,  who  informed  or  reminded  him  of  the 
sacred  source  from  which  that  flower  derives  its 
name.  The  correction  was  at  once  made  ;  and  the 
passion-flower  yielded  its  place  to  the  tiger-lily. 


XVII 
A  SECOND  COLLOQUY  ON  CRITICISM 

BY  AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 

IN  an  earlier  number  of  this  Review  I  remarked 
on  the  fact  that  acquaintance  with  authors 
dulls  the  edge  of  criticism.  Since  then  I  have 
noticed  an  apparent  unwillingness  on  the  part  of 
critics  to  admit  this  ;  but  surely  to  deny  it  is  to  fly 
in  the  face  of  human  nature.  You  cannot  impale 
a  friend  upon  your  hook  as  if  you  loved  him  ; 
wriggle  the  silly  fellow  will  until  the  mildest- 
mannered  critic  finds  himself  using  the  language 
of  the  fishwife,  famous  in  story,  who  was  over- 
heard cursing  the  eels  she  was  skinning  alive  for 
not  lying  still.  Lordly  editors  may  declare  them- 
selves able  to  select  from  their  huge  roll-call  of 
critics  '  kinless  loons '  who,  like  the  Prince  Regent, 
*  have  no  predilections,'  but  one  critic  is  not  always 
so  good  as  another. 

So  important  a  thing  is  a  free  hand  that  young 
men,  with  all  their  rashness  and  crudity,  are  not 
infrequently  the  best  critics  of  contemporary  books, 


I20  Among  My  Books 

for,  knowing  hardly  *  anybody,'  and  with  their  way 
in  the  world  still  to  make,  they  are  alike  ruthless 
and  unembarrassed,  and  consequently  delightfully 
well  able,  with  their  whoops  and  cries,  to  flutter  the 
dove-cotes  where,  drooping  a  little  over  their  perches, 
sit  sunning  themselves  the  crop-full  authors.  But 
the  sad  years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind 
bring  other  things  as  well,  and  amongst  them  a 
hatred  of  strife  and  contention,  of  scowling  faces 
and  averted  glances. 

*  Saint  Praxed's  ever  was  the  church  for  peace.' 
Why  should  I  strike  even  the  Hospitaller's  shield  ? 
What  need  to  revile  my  neighbour  simply  because 
he  has  written  a  novel  that  makes  me  creep  all 
down  my  back.  He  will  not  leave  off  writing  be- 
cause of  my  back,  but  I  (how  easily)  can  leave  off 
reading  my  neighbour,  and  thus  in  time  may  learn 
to  love  him.  Yes,  but  what  is  to  become  of  my 
critical  faculties  ?    Are  they  to  find  no  expression  ? 

To  ignore  the  living  altogether,  and  with  the 
poet  Southey  (but  was  Southey  a  poet  ?)  to  spend 
your  critical  hours  among  the  dead,  is  a  way  out  of 
the  difficulty,  and  a  very  pleasant  way  too,  and  one 
full  of  peace  and  safety.  Pope  cannot  lampoon 
you,  or  Milton  call  you  a  dog  with  two  g's.  I  have 
never  cared  to  deny  that  I  like  authors  best  when 
they  are  dead. 

Philosopher  and  Poet  you  shall  find 

Each  ever  after  his  own  kind. 

'Tis  well  to  watch  them  ;  not  too  near,  perhaps, 

One  snarls  at  you,  the  other  snaps. 


A  Second  Colloquy  on  Criticism    121 

Besides,  to  the  critic  Death  is  of  great  assistance. 
There  is  no  more  wonderful  adjuster  of  reputations 
than  he.  No  sooner  has  'the  surly,  sullen  bell' 
given  witness  to  the  world  that  a  distinguished 
author  has  departed  from  it,  than  you  begin  to 
perceive  with  a  nervous  apprehensiveness  how 
much  you  had  either  over  or  under-estimated 
him.  In  the  former  case,  greatly  though  you  had 
prized  him,  much  as  you  may  owe  to  him,  none  the 
less  is  he  to  be  seen  creeping  slowly  down  the  sky ; 
whilst  in  the  latter  case  the  under-estimated  author 
proudly  climbs  it. 

Living  authors,  though  they  despise  the  critics, 
still  clamour  to  be  criticised,  and  no  more  approve 
of  an  exclusive  devotion  being  paid  to  the  dead 
than  does  an  artist  of  to-day  share  your  dilettante 
conviction  that  the  only  pictures  worth  buying  are 
by  the  Old  Masters  ;  but  from  the  critic's  point  of 
view  it  is  hard  to  forget  that  the  only  English 
critics  who  have  any  reputation  chiefly  concerned 
themselves  with  authors  who  were  no  longer  living 
when  they  (these  critics)  wrote.  Dryden,  Addison, 
Johnson,  Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Bagehot,  Arnold 
were  great  critics  who  did  not  worry  overmuch 
about  their  contemporaries.  Indeed,  one  wonders 
whether  it  would  be  possible  to  fill  even  a  thin 
volume  with  criticisms  of  authors  written  by  their 
coevals  which  would  be  worth  reading.     I  doubt  it. 

Nor  is  it  hard  to  find  the  reason.  Authors 
who  claim  to  be  imaginative  are  divided  into  the 
good,  the  bad,  and  the  humdrum.      Contemporary 


122  Among  My  Books 

criticism  finds  it  easy  to  dispose  of  the  bad  author 
and  the  humdrum,  the  only  risk  it  runs  (no  light 
one  certainly)  being  the  occasional  mistake  of  one 
of  the  bad  authors  for  a  good  one.  Criticism  of 
this  kind  quickly  loses  its  interest.  Who  wants 
to  be  for  ever  following  a  murdered  poetaster  to  his 
long  home  ?  Who  would  wish  to  live  enshrined  in 
a  sneer  ?  The  only  one  of  Macaulay's  Essays  any 
sane  man  would  consent  to  lose  is  his  Montgomery, 
and  though  Dr  Johnson's  review  of  Soame  Jenyns' 
*  Origin  of  Evil '  is  worth  a  king's  ransom,  it  is  not 
a  sine  qua  non  of  existence  like  his  preface  to 
Shakespeare. 

But  what  about  the  good  authors  ?  Surely  the 
critic  might  have  something  to  say  to  them.  So 
indeed  he  might,  and  so  after  a  time  he  will,  but 
at  the  start  it  is  nervous  work.  It  was  well  said  by 
Carlyle,  who  said  many  things  well — '  Directly  in 
the  face  of  most  intellectual  tea-circles  it  may  be 
asserted  that  no  good  book  or  good  thing  of  any 
sort  shows  its  best  face  at  first ;  nay,  that  the 
commonest  quality  in  a  true  work  of  art,  if  its 
excellence  have  any  depth  and  compass,  is  that  at 
first  sight  it  occasions  a  certain  disappointment — 
perhaps  even  mingled  with  its  undeniable  beauty 
a  certain  feeling  of  aversion! 

This  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the  matter,  and 
accounts  for  the  extraordinary  reception  given  to 
works  of  genius  by  critics,  undeniably  well  equipped 
for  general  purposes.  These  critics  did  but  express 
*a  certain  feeling  of  aversion,'  occasioned  by  the 


A  Second  Colloquy  on  Criticism    123 

first  sight  of  an  original.  It  is,  I  repeat,  nervous 
work  handling  the  genius  which  has  not  yet  created 
its  own  atmosphere. 

Perhaps  the  safest  method  of  criticism  is  the 
comparative.  It  is  also  the  most  interesting.  And 
yet  people  professed  to  grow  weary  of  Matthew 
Arnold's  pocket- scale  of  poetical  weights  and 
measures  with  which  he  was  so  fond  of  test- 
ing the  value  of  men's  wares.  The  meritorious 
Howard  did  the  like  with  prison  rations.  *  Is  that 
a  ration  ? '  he  would  exclaim,  and  then,  whipping 
out  a  scale,  would  demonstrate  to  the  affrighted 
gaoler  it  was  half  a  pound  short  of  weight.  But 
for  all  that  Mr  Arnold's  was  an  excellent  way.  Is 
it  blank  verse  we  are  invited  to  consider  ?  Surely 
it  is  no  sin  to  murmur 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole, 
More  safe  I  sing  with  mortal  voice,  unchanged 
To  hoarse  or  mute,  though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fall'n  and  evil  tongues. 
In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compassed  round. 
And  solitude  ;  yet  not  alone,  while  thou 
Visit'st  my  slumbers  nightly,  or  when  morn 
Purples  the  East.     Still  govern  thou  my  song 
Urania,  and  fit  audience  find,  though  few. 

Is  it  an  ode  ?     Well,  well ! 

Who  are  these  coming  to  the  sacrifice  ? 
To  what  green  altar  and  mysterious  priest 
Lead'st  thou  that  heifer,  lowing  at  the  skies, 
And  all  her  silken  flanks  with  garlands  drest  ? 
What  little  town  by  river  or  sea-shore. 
Or  mountain-built  with  peaceful  citadel, 
Is  emptied  of  its  folk,  this  pious  morn  ?^ 


124  Among  My  Books 

It  is  only  by  some  such  means  as  those  employed 
by  Mr  Arnold  that  the  great  tradition  is  kept  alive, 
and  with  the  passages  he  was  so  fond  of  quoting 
for  ever  sounding  in  our  ears,  it  ought  not  to  be 
difficult  to  conquer  one's  first  feelings  of  aversion 
to  the  next  great  poet  who  comes  among  us,  even 
though  he  should  not  appear  clothed  in  his  might, 
but  (as  is  generally  the  case)  with  all  his  faults 
lying  thick  upon  the  surface  of  his  verse.  It  ought 
not  perhaps — but  it  will  be.  Who  need  wish  to  be 
a  critic  in  the  twentieth  century?  When,  what 
with  American  copyright,  royalties  on  the  drama, 
and  heavy  death-duties,  I  may  live  to  see  Chats- 
worth  inhabited  by  a  really  bad  author,  whilst  all 
my  satisfaction  in  the  reflection  that  I  at  all  events 
never  opened  my  mouth  without  abusing  him  may 
be  destroyed  by  the  mournful  knowledge  that  I 
allowed  the  really  good  author  of  my  day  to  pass 
without  a  tribute  by. 


XVIII 
OLD  LAMPS  FOR  NEW 

BY   GEORGE  W.   SMALLEY 

*  T  T  THEN  a  new  book  comes  out/  said  Sam 
V  V  Rogers,  '  I  read  an  old  one.'  Among  all 
the  maxims  about  reading,  this — for  a  maxim  it 
is — seems  to  me  the  one  most  apt  for  the  present 
day.  It  is  also  the  one  to  which  least  attention 
is  paid.  There  is  a  fashion  in  reading,  as  in  hats 
and  coats,  and,  in  most  circles  which  desire  to  be 
thought  literary,  the  fashion  is  novelty.  Whoso 
would  be  esteemed  a  person  of  culture  must 
know,  not,  as  Arnold  said,  the  best  which  has  been 
thought  and  done  in  the  world,  but  the  latest. 
You  may  perhaps  escape  without  reproach  if  you 
know  nothing  of  Homer  or  Dante,  but  if  you 
cannot  show  yourself  familiar  with  the  last  blend  of 
fiction  and  pseudo-Christianity  or  pseudo-socialism, 
or  have  not  some  smattering  of  such  literature  as 
the  circulating  library  provides,  and  especially  of 
the  books  best  advertised,  you  must  endure  the 
censure  of  those  who  have.  '  There  is  nothing  so 
contemptible,'  said  Mazzini,  '  as  a  literary  coterie.' 


126  Among  My  Books 

Tennyson,  who  was  not  without  literature,  quotes 
the  saying  and  approves  it.  And  there  is  perhaps 
no  extant  literary  coterie  in  which  the  modern  note 
is  not  heard  continually. 

Emerson  advised  us  to  read  no  book  which  is 
not  a  year  old.  He  thought  that  a  book  which  had 
lived  a  year  might  have  a  presumption  in  its  favour  ; 
not  foreseeing  by  what  publishing  arts  a  book  may 
be  kept  alive  after  the  breath  is  out  of  it.  Nor  did 
he  value  periodical  literature  overmuch.  'If,'  he 
said,  'we  should  give  to  Shakespeare,  to  Bacon, 
to  Wordsworth,  the  time  we  give  to  the  news- 
papers— but  who  dare  speak  of  such  a  thing  ? '  It 
is  plain  that  he  did  not  think  newspapers  the  best 
food  for  the  mind — even  the  newspapers  of  his  day. 
To  them,  and  to  the  inexorable  necessity  weighing 
upon  them  to  publish  what  is  new,  he  may  well 
enough  have  traced  the  passion  for  mere  newness 
which  affects  the  modern  reader  of  modern  books. 
He  had  another  view.  I  went  to  see  him  at  Con- 
cord while  I  was  reading  in  the  Harvard  Law 
School.  After  some  questions  about  the  study  of 
law — for  he  liked  to  know  the  practical  side  of 
things — and  after  commending  it,  he  added  :  *  But 
do  not  read  law  only.  Keep  your  mind  open. 
Read  Plato.'  Then  and  after,  he  urged  the  students 
who  came  to  him  for  counsel,  while  mastering  their 
own  branch  of  learning,  to  master  also  some  other, 
and  to  read  in  a  direction  as  different  as  possible 
from  that  of  their  professional  pursuits.  He  would 
have  them,  in  Burke's  phrase,  diversify  their  minds. 


Old  Lamps  for  New  127 

He  may  well  enough  have  borrowed  his  view  of  the 
law  from  Burke's  well-known  criticism,  that  it  does 
not  open  and  liberalise  the  mind  exactly  in  the 
same  proportion  as  it  quickens  and  invigorates  the 
understanding.  However  that  may  be,  Emerson's 
remedy  was  not  to  read  a  book  of  the  day,  but  a 
Greek  author  of  whom  he  has  said  that  perhaps  not 
more  than  a  dozen  men  in  any  one  generation  have 
a  full  perception  of  his  philosophy  and  purpose. 

There  is  little  chance  that  any  protest,  or  any 
number  of  protests,  against  the  futility  of  what 
passes  for  literature  in  the  market-place  will 
diminish  either  the  publishers'  output  or  the 
ambition  or  industry  of  the  writers  of  the  day. 
The  yearly  statistics  of  printed  books  are,  I  believe, 
a  little  more  appalling  in  England  than  in  the 
United  States,  but  in  both  countries  the  produc- 
tivity increases  yearly.  The  expression  of  a  pre- 
ference for  books  which  have  stood  the  test  of  time 
would  be  less  intelligible  perhaps  in  New  York 
than  in  London,  at  any  rate  less  acceptable  ;  and 
less  in  Chicago  than  in  New  York.  There  is, 
among  large  classes  of  Americans,  a  fierce  im- 
patience of  what  is  venerable  or  remote,  whether 
in  literature  or  other  matters.  They  would  declare 
with  Macbeth  that- 
All  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools 
The  way  to  dusty  death. 

— and  therefore  they  are  for  to-day. 

It  has  been  said  that  there  are  in  France  but 
two  parties — those  who  believe  that  the  history  of 


128  Among  My  Books 

France  began  in  1789,  and  those  who  believe  that 
it  ended  then.  There  is  a  type  of  American  who 
considers  that  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  for 
the  people  of  this  country,  history  began  in  1776, 
on  the  fourth  of  July  of  that  year—and  not  political 
history  only.  He  it  is  whose  voice  has  been  heard 
for  years  past  rather  loudly  insisting  that  the 
literature  which  best  deserves  the  attention  of 
Americans  is  American  literature.  When  M.  Paul 
Bourget,  following  Tocqueville  and  others,  too 
bluntly  replied,  '  There  is  none,'  this  patriot  re- 
joined hotly  that  Mr  Paul  Bourget  and  Tocqueville 
and  the  rest  knew  nothing  about  it — they  were 
foreigners  and  Frenchmen,  and  how  could  they? 
The  truth,  of  course,  lies  midway.  It  is  unhappily 
true,  that  even  the  great  West  has  not  yet  given 
birth  to  a  Shakespeare,  though  Minnesota  is  re- 
sponsible for  Mr  Ignatius  Donnelly,  who  sought  to 
prove  that  Shakespeare's  plays  were  written  by 
Bacon — not  perhaps  a  long  step  toward  the  creative 
energy  of  the  Elizabethan  period.  Mr  Howells  has 
announced  that  in  the  writing  of  novels  the  method 
of  Thackeray  is  obsolete,  and  yet  Thackeray  is  not 
wholly  superseded.  There  was  to  be  a  new  fiction  ; 
the  advent  of  the  American  novel  was  long  since  pre- 
dicted, and  is  still  awaited.  It  is  like  what  Gambetta 
said  when  challenged  to  take  sides  on  the  social 
question,  '  There  is  no  social  question  ;  there  are 
social  questions.'  So  there  is  no  '  American  novel,' 
but  there  are  American  novels  in  multitude,  and 
many  of  them  admirable. 


Old  Lamps  for  New  129 

A  ^more  rational,  though  less  patriotic,  theory  of 
criticism  has  of  late  prevailed.  It  is  seen  that  even 
in  America  the  laws  which  since  the  dawn  of  letters 
have  governed  the  production  of  literature  must 
govern  it  still.  It  was  an  American  artist  of 
originality  who  surprised  the  Royal  Academy  by 
enunciating  the  canon  that  there  was  no  such  thing 
as  English  art  or  French  art — there  was  simply 
Art,  and  it  was  universal  and  of  all  time.  Mr 
Whistler's  opinion  cannot  be  put  aside.  There  is, 
of  course,  a  sense  in  which  there  is  an  English  or 
French  school  of  Art,  and  an  English  or  French  or 
American  Literature,  as  there  was  a  Greek  and 
Roman  Literature. 

We  have  in  the  United  States  a  body  of  litera- 
ture of  which  we  are  justly  proud.  But  its  greatest 
names  belong,  as  in  England,  to  the  past,  and 
every  one  of  them  is  an  argument  for  the  reading 
of  old  books  and  not  of  new  books.  The  intellec- 
tual activities  of  to-day,  whether  in  England  or  in 
America,  seem  to  many  of  us  of  a  high  order,  but 
they  are  not  pre-eminently  literary.  Who  doubts 
that  in  England  the  golden  period  of  the  Victorian 
age  is  past?  Who  expects  in  America  a  new 
Emerson,  a  new  Hawthorne,  a  new  Lowell,  ere  the 
century  dies  out  ?  I  do  not  mean  to  disparage,  if  I 
could,  by  a  single  word,  the  well-earned  fame  of 
those  living  writers  who  are,  as  Johnson  said, 
among  the  chief  glories  of  every  people.  Some  of 
them  are  well  known  in  England,  some  less  well 
known.     Mr  Henry  James,  Mr  Howells,  Mr  Bret 

I 


130  Among  My  Books 

Harte,  *  John  Oliver  Hobbes ' — these  are  novelists 
whose  names  are  household  words  in  two  countries. 
But  Octave  Thanet  and  Owen  Wister,  who  have 
taken  up  the  story  of  Western  life  as  it  is  lived 
to-day,  both  of  whom  write  with  picturesque  fidel- 
ity, have  yet  a  transatlantic  reputation  to  achieve. 
Stedman,  the  poet-critic  ;  Aldrich,  the  poet-novelist ; 
Hay,  the  poet-historian  and  ambassador,  are  writers 
who,  though  living,  have  kept  their  honourable  place 
for  a  generation.  In  history,  in  political  economy, 
in  law,  in  science,  in  many  other  great  departments 
of  intellectual  life,  there  have  been  and  are  great 
American  names,  and  in  pure  literature  there  are 
others. 

Mr  Goldwin  Smith,  writing  the  other  day  in 
these  columns,  remarked  that  American  historio- 
graphy had  of  late  years  advanced  greatly  in  purity 
of  style.  There  he  suggests  the  service  which 
literature  may  do,  and  I  hope  is  doing.  There 
really  is  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why 
history,  whether  in  books  or  newspapers,  should  be 
written  in  slovenly  English.  Froude,  with  his  in- 
comparable beauty  of  style,  is  a  witness  to  the 
contrary.  But  is  a  good  style  to  be  acquired  other- 
wise than  by  much  study  of  the  great  writers  who 
have  gone  before  us  ?  Let  Stevenson  answer — he 
has  told  us  how  he  acquired  his.  How  many  living 
writers  can  be  named  to  whom  the  student  of  style 
could  usefully  go  to  school  ?  An  exception  may  be 
made  in  favour  of  the  French  :  even  if  we  include 
some   of  the   living.      A   good   French   writer   is 


Old  Lamps  for  New  131 

probably  the  best  guide  to  the  young  English  or 
American  writer,  because  the  Frenchman  abounds 
in  precisely  those  qualities  of  style  in  which  the 
Englishman  or  American  is  most  deficient.  And 
when  you  go  to  a  foreign  land,  it  is  like  going  to 
another  generation  ;  you  pass  out  of  the  present 
atmosphere  and  you  escape  the  influences  which 
make  the  atmosphere  of  to-day  injurious. 

So,  whether  we  love  literature  for  what  we  may 
get  from  it,  or  love  it,  as  I  hope  we  do,  for  its  own 
sake,  we  come  back  to  the  same  point  and  to  the 
writers  whose  fame  is  established.  And  if  we  want 
another  counsellor  we  may  take  Lord  Kenyon,  who, 
in  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law,  wished  always 
stare  supra  antiquas  vias — bad  Latin,  but  sound 
sense. 


XIX 
BACON  ENTHRONED 

BY  D.   H.   MADDEN 

THE  writer  of  the  following  paper  can  lay  no 
claim  to  originality.  His  method  of  liter- 
ary investigation  and  his  mode  of  reasoning 
are  simply  those  in  vogue  among  Baconians ; 
nor  do  his  revelations  differ  widely  from  those 
upon  which  their  faith  is  founded.  If  his  com- 
munication has  any  value,  it  is  because  he  has 
carried  his  inquiries  somewhat  further  than  his 
predecessors,  who  have  failed  to  detect  traces  of 
Bacon's  handiwork  in  Venus  and  Adonis^  and, 
for  the  most  part,  leave  Ben  Jonson  severely 
alone.  The  identity  of  the  writer  and  the  reasons 
which  induced  him  to  confide  his  discoveries  to 
my  care  can  interest  no  one.  And  so,  without 
further  preface,  I  leave  my  correspondent  to  speak 
for  himself: — 

*  Sir, — The   faith  of  the  simple   folk  who  still 
believe   that   the  "  Shakespeare "   plays   were   the 


134  Among  My  Books 

workmanship  of  a  sporting  attorney's  clerk  from 
Stratford-on-Avon  must  have  been  rudely  shaken 
by  the  discovery  announced  in  a  recent  magazine 
article  entitled  "  Shakespeare  Dethroned." 

* "  Hi  ludi,  tuiti  sibi,  Fr.  Bacono  nati."  This  is 
the  statement  which  the  ingenuity  of  Mr  Bucke 
has  evolved  from  the  hitherto  unintelligible  word  in 
Love's  Labour's  Lost — "honorificabilitudinitatibus." 
It  is  little  to  the  purpose  to  point  out  that  the 
sentence  is  not  Latin.  It  is  the  best  that  even 
the  genius  of  Bacon  could  do  with  the  word 
selected  as  the  repository  of  his  great  secret,  and 
what  satisfied  Bacon  may  well  be  accepted  by 
Baconians. 

'  I  must  not  be  understood  as  minimising  the 
importance  of  this  most  convincing  anagram  when 
I  say  that  even  it  must  yield  to  a  direct  and 
categorical  statement  of  fact.  Such  a  statement 
it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  discover. 

'  There  is  a  scene  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor 
so  devoid  of  apparent  meaning  that  it  has  been 
omitted  from  acting  versions  of  the  play.  It  is 
that  in  which  William,  son  of  Master  Page,  is  put 
through  his  Latin  accidence  by  Sir  Hugh  Evans. 
He  is  made  to  decline  the  pronoun  "  hie,"  which 
finally  resolves  itself  into  "  banc,  hoc,"  pronounced 
by  the  Welshman  "hang  hog." 

*  Now,  Sir,  this  passage,  read  in  the  light  of 
modern  discoveries,  is  absolutely  clear. 

'  For  here  we  have  a  "  page "  associated  with 
the  name  "  William,"  and  denoted  by  the  pronoun 


Bacon  Enthroned  135 

"  hie,"   gradually   resolved   into   the  words  "  hang 
hog,"  whereupon  ensues  the  following  dialogue  : — 

'Mrs  Quickly.—''  Hang-hog"  is  Latin  for  bacon,  I  warrant  you. 
'  Evans. — Leave  your  prabbles  [parables]  'oman. 

*  In  other  words, "  hie  "  {i.e.,  William)  is  shown,  by 
the  medium  of  the  Latin  language,  to  be  no  other 
than  Baeon. 

'Baeon  and  the  learned  Ben  Jonson  seem  to 
have  agreed  in  seleeting  the  Latin  tongue  as  the 
means  of  eonveying  to  posterity  their  cryptic 
information.  The  writer  of  the  article  to  which 
I  have  referred  boldly  appeals  to  the  testimony 
of  Jonson.  He  does  well ;  for  if  Jonson,  who 
knew  both  Bacon  and  Shakespeare  intimately, 
and  who  could  be  under  no  mistake  as  to  the 
authorship  of  the  plays,  had  really  attributed 
them  to  Shakespeare,  I  should  have  felt  some 
difficulty  in  getting  over  his  evidence.  Here, 
again,  I  think  that  I  may  fairly  claim  credit  for 
a  remarkable  discovery. 

*  The  passage  upon  which  Shakespearians  mainly 
rely  is  that  in  which  Jonson  explains  his  wish  that 
Shakespeare  had  blotted  a  thousand  lines  ;  adding, 
"  I  loved  the  man,  and  do  honour  his  memory,  on 
this  side  idolatry,  as  much  as  any." 

*  This  remarkable  statement  is  found  under  the 
significant  heading,  "  Discoveries."  It  is  intro- 
duced by  the  words,  "  De  Shakespeare  nostrat." 
The  last  word  has  been  generally  taken  to  be  an 
abbreviated    form    of  "nostrate."      But  who   ever 


136  Among  My  Books 

abbreviated  a  word  merely  to  avoid  the  use  of  a 
single  letter  ?  It  is  evident  that  "  Shakespeare 
nostrat"  is  a  fragment  of  a  longer  sentence.  In 
the  light  of  the  "discoveries"  at  which  Jonson 
hints,  we  can  supply  the  missing  words,  and  read, 
"  Shakespeare,  no  Strat[ford  man]."  If  the  pre- 
ceding word  "  De  "  be  also  (as  seems  probable)  an 
abbreviation,  it  may  well  stand  for  "  dethroned," 
and  the  whole  "  discovery  "  (with  slight  transposi- 
tion) will  read :  "  Shakespeare  de[throned]  no 
Strat[ford  man]."  Thus  Jonson  as  well  as  Bacon 
made  elaborate  preparations  for  the  inevitable 
discovery,  and  he  has  left  it  on  record  that  if  he 
lent  himself  to  Bacon's  scheme,  he,  at  all  events, 
was  not  deceived. 

*  The  Anagram  and  the  Cryptogram  we  know  of 
old.  More  valuable,  because  more  characteristic 
of  the  author,  is  what  I  may  call  the  Crypto-pun, 
or  hidden  play  upon  words,  suggesting  to  the 
initiated  the  name  of  Bacon.  "  What  is  a.b.  spelt 
backward,  with  the  horn  on  his  head  ? "  asks 
Moth  in  Loves  Labour^ s  Lost.  In  these  apparently 
unmeaning  words  Mr  Bucke  finds  a  cryptic  allu- 
sion. The  answer  to  that,  of  course,  is  "  Ba,  with 
a  horn  added."  Now  Ba  with  a  horn  added  is 
Bacornu^  "  which  is  not,  but  suggests,  and  was 
probably  meant  to  suggest,  Bacon." 

'  I  venture  to  suggest  that  even  a  better  example 
of  the  Crypto-pun  may  be  found  in  the  word  by 
which  the  author  of  the  "  Shakespearian  "  dramas 
has   associated   his   real   name   with   the   greatest 


Bacon   Enthroned  137 

creation  of  his  genius.  We  like  to  think  of  David 
Copperfield  as  Dickens,  and  of  Maggie  Tulliver  as 
George  Eliot.  Every  true  Baconian  would  gladly 
connect  the  name  of  his  master  with  that  of 
Hamlet.  It  would  have  been  impossible  for  the 
author,  consistently  with  his  scheme  of  conceal- 
ment, to  have  called  the  Prince  of  Denmark 
Bacon.  But,  foreseeing  the  inevitable  time  of 
discovery,  he  named  him  Ham  : — let,  or  hindered 
from  discovering  himself  to  the  world. 

*  I  have  no  doubt  that  a  careful  search  would 
reveal  many  more  examples  of  this  most  interest- 
ing device.  Take  for  instance  Sonnet  cxi.,  in 
which  the  poet  admittedly  speaks  in  his  proper 
person.  It  is  impossible  to  extract  from  this 
sonnet  any  Crypto-pun  on  the  name  of "  Shake- 
speare." But  what  of  "  Bacon  ? "  When  the 
writer  after  a  reference  to  "  eisel "  (vinegar)  as 
a  remedy  for  some  "strong  infection"  (possible 
trichinosis),  adds,  "pity  is  enough  to  cure  me"  is 
it  not  evident  that  this  phrase  (in  Mr  Bucke's 
words)  "suggests,  and  was  probably  meant  to 
suggest.  Bacon?"  Is  it  not  at  least  as  evident 
as  the  suggestion  of  Bacon  by  the  words  "a.b. 
spelt  backward,  with  the  horn  on  his  head  ?  "  On 
this  point  I  appeal  with  confidence  to  even  the 
most  bigoted  of  Shakespearians. 

'  The  profusion  with  which  allusions  to  field 
sports  and  to  horsemanship  are  scattered  through- 
out the  works  attributed  to  Shakespeare,  taken  in 
connection   with    the   fact   that   Bacon   shows   no 


138  Among  My  Books 

interest  in  sport,  has  been  eagerly  laid  hold  on 
by  Shakespearians.  These  allusions  have  been 
described  as  "  purposeless,"  often  out  of  place  with 
their  surroundings,  and  alien  to  the  plot  or  charac- 
ter in  hand. 

' "  Purposeless  "  they  certainly  are,  on  the  assump- 
tion that  Shakespeare  wrote  the  pieces  into  which 
they  are  intruded.  But  surely  this  circumstance 
ought  to  suggest  a  doubt  to  a  thinking  mind. 
Why  attribute  "purposeless"  action  to  one  cap- 
able of  writing  Othello  and  As  You  Like  It?  But 
if  Bacon  be  the  author,  the  purpose  becomes  at 
once  apparent,  and  the  part  played  by  Shake- 
speare in  the  production  of  the  Baconian  plays  is 
clearly  discernible.  Their  purpose  was  to  aid  in 
the  scheme  of  concealment.  That  Shakespeare 
was  the  transcriber,  not  the  author,  of  the  Baconian 
dramas  is  suggested  by  the  recorded  fact  that  the 
MSS.,  as  delivered  to  the  players,  contained  no 
blots  or  erasures.  He  was,  I  venture  to  suggest, 
something  more  than  a  transcriber.  To  him  was 
intrusted  the  task  of  interlarding  the  plays  with 
sporting  allusions  and  phrases,  introduced  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  avert  all  suspicion  from  their  true 
author.  It  must  be  admitted  that  he  performed 
his  allotted  task  faithfully.  Indeed,  he  may  be 
said  to  have  overdone  it.  For  instance,  the 
words  "heart"  and  "dear,"  in  season  and  out  of 
season,  suggest  the  inevitable  pun.  So  coarsely 
was  this  done  that  the  suspicions  of  critics  were 
aroused,  and   they  were  more   than  once  on  the 


Bacon  Enthroned  139 

verge  of  a  discovery.  Coleridge  absolutely  rejects 
the  line  containing  Mark  Antony's  pun  on  the 
death  of  Caesar  as  an  "alien  conceit"  intruded 
into  the  original  text.  Professor  Dowden,  refer- 
ring to  the  description  of  the  horse  in  Venus  and 
Adonis,  asks  whether  it  is  poetry  or  an  extract 
from  the  catalogue  of  an  auctioneer. 

'  I  observe  that  Mr  Bucke  does  not  hesitate  to 
attribute  this  poem,  together  with  the  Sonnets  and 
Lucrece,  to  the  author  of  the  plays.  In  so  doing 
he  has  deprived  Shakespearians  of  their  strongest 
argument.  Who  but  the  author  of  Venus  and 
Adonis  (I  have  heard  it  asked)  could  have 
written  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  and  who  but  the 
author  of  the  Sonnets  could  have  conceived  the 
Tragedies  ? 

*  I  cannot  pursue  in  detail  the  train  of  thought 
thus  suggested.  I  can  only  indicate  a  few  results 
of  the  discovery,  (i)  The  identification  of  Mr 
W.  H.  (the  "only  begetter"  of  the  Sonnets  and 
the  despair  of  Shakespearians)  with  William 
Herbert,  an  elder  brother  of  the  poet,  George 
Herbert,  to  whom  Bacon  dedicated  his  only 
acknowledged  volume  of  verse,  and  whose  brother 
would  naturally  be  chosen  as  the  interme- 
diary between  the  author  and  the  publisher  of 
the  Sonnets.  (2)  A  clear  understanding  of  the 
poet's  meaning  when  he  tells  us  that  "public 
manners"  (the  exigencies  of  public  life)  caused 
his  name  to  receive  a  brand  ("Bacon"  branded 
as   "Shakespeare"),  adding   that   the   poet   made 


140  Among  My  Books 

himself  "  a  motley  [play-actor]  to  the  view."  (3) 
The  solution  of  the  enigma  of  the  black  woman 
of  Sonnets  cxxvii.-cxlii.  (the  "  worser  spirit " 
striving  for  mastery  over  the  poet's  soul)  by  the 
Black  Art  of  the  Middle  Ages — the  "  rough  magic  " 
finally  abjured  by  Bacon  in  the  person  of  Prosper©, 
which  he  contrasts  with  his  "  better  angel " — />., 
the  Baconian  Philosophy,  the  keynote  of  which  is 
to  be  found  in  the  first  line  of  the  first  Sonnet, 
"  From  fairest  creatures  we  desire  increase,"  and  of 
which  Macaulay  writes :  "  What,  then,  was  the 
end  which  Bacon  proposed  to  himself?  It  was, 
to  use  his  own  emphatic  expression,  fruit." 
*  I  am.  Sir, 

'Your  obedient  servant, 

'Hang  Hog.' 

I  see  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why  the 
speculations  of  my  correspondent  should  not  be 
adopted  by  Baconians,  Their  creed  is  essentially 
progressive.  The  hints  and  conjectures  of  half  a 
century  ago  have  become  the  beliefs  of  to-day. 
To  my  mind  his  Crypto-puns  are  quite  as  con- 
vincing as  the  Cryptograms  or  Anagrams  of  his 
predecessors ;  and  if  his  explanation  of  the 
'  Shakespearian "  allusions  to  sport  and  to  horse- 
manship be  rejected,  I  really  do  not  know  what 
can  be  offered  in  its  place. 


XX 

AN  OLD  PUZZLE 
BY  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

THERE  is  a  charm  in  old  stones  of  crime 
which  must  be  admitted  even  by  people 
who  are  too  prudish  to  confess  to  pleasure  in 
modern  police  reports.  Perhaps  in  reading  the 
*  State  Trials '  we  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are 
studying  history  ;  or  it  may  be  that  there  is  some- 
thing impressive — as  Carlyle  so  often  insists — in 
the  sudden  gleam  which  for  a  moment  illuminates 
one  little  spot  of  light  in  the  vanishing  past.  Any- 
how the  history  of  Miss  Canning,  which  occupied 
all  London  for  a  year  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  has  a  perennial  interest.  Fielding,  un- 
luckily for  himself,  got  mixed  up  in  the  story; 
Voltaire  wrote  an  account  of  it  as  having  some 
remote  bearing  upon  the  famous  Calas  proceedings ; 
Lord  Campbell  and  Mr  John  Paget  agree  that  it 
was  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  cases  on  record  ; 
and  Mr  Courtney  Kenny,  reader  in  law  at  Cam- 
bridge, has  elaborately  discussed  it  in  a  pamphlet 


142  Among  My  Books 

recently  republished  from  the  Law  Quarterly 
Review.  There  are  questions  of  more  pressing  im- 
portance, inasmuch  as  Miss  Canning  and  her 
victims  or  persecutors  have  probably  been  dead 
for  a  century.  Yet  there  is  something  still  fascinat- 
ing in  the  story,  both  as  an  incidental  picture  of 
English  life  at  the  period,  and  as  an  illustration  of 
some  points  in  the  theory  of  evidence — perhaps, 
we  should  say,  in  the  genesis  of  lies. 

The  main  facts  are  simple.  Elizabeth  Canning 
was  a  servant  girl  in  London.  She  was  allowed  to 
visit  an  uncle  on  the  ist  January,  1753.  She  set 
out  to  return  at  9  P.M.,  but  never  reached  her 
home.  Four  weeks  afterwards  she  suddenly  ap- 
peared at  her  mother's  house  in  a  state  of  squalor 
and  emaciation.  The  problem  is,  Where  had  she 
been  in  the  interval  ?  If  her  own  account  be  true, 
she  had  been  attacked  by  two  men  and  dragged  to 
a  house  ten  miles  off  at  Enfield  Wash,  occupied  by 
'  Mother  Wells,'  a  woman  of  the  worst  character. 
An  old  gipsy  woman  called  Mrs  Squires,  with  two 
girls,  was  in  the  kitchen.  Mrs  Squires'  face  was 
not  one  to  be  forgotten.  *  God  Almighty,'  as  she 
said  herself,  'never  made  such  another,'  and  her 
portrait  is  extant  to  confirm  the  statement.  This 
hideous  old  lady  asked  if  Canning  would  *  go  their 
way  ? '  She  said  '  No ' ;  whereupon  she  was  con- 
fined in  a  back  room,  where  she  stayed  without 
further  molestation  for  four  weeks.  She  had 
nothing  to  eat  except  some  bits  of  bread  and  a 
mince-pie,  which  happened  to  be  in  her  pocket. 


An  Old  Puzzle  143 

At  the  end  of  the  time,  she  pulled  some  boards 
from  a  window,  and  escaped.  Mrs  Wells  and  Mrs 
Squires  were  tried  upon  charge  of  this  outrage,  and 
on  26th  February  both  were  convicted  and  sen- 
tenced to  death.  The  Lord  Mayor,  however,  who 
was  on  the  bench,  thought  the  case  suspicious, 
obtained  a  reprieve,  and  made  inquiries.  Mrs 
Squires  declared  that  during  the  time  of  the 
alleged  imprisonment  she  had  been  making  her 
rounds  in  Dorsetshire  with  her  son  and  daughter. 
Confirmatory  evidence  was  collected,  and  after 
certain  delays  Canning  was  tried  for  perjury  and 
convicted  in  May,  1753. 

The  excitement  at  the  trial  was  intense.  Mobs 
collected  round  the  Court  and  threatened  the 
witnesses.  It  was  the  first  criminal  trial  which  was 
not  finished  at  a  single  sitting.  Till  eclipsed  by 
the  Tichborne  case,  it  was  scarcely  surpassed  by 
any  non-political  case  in  the  interest  excited. 
Omitting  a  number  of  subsidiary  questions,  the 
issue  seems  to  be  pretty  simple.  Thirty-five 
witnesses  swore  that  Mrs  Squires  was  travelling  in 
Dorsetshire  and  elsewhere  during  January,  1753. 
Twenty-five  swore  that  they  had  seen  her  during 
that  time  at  Enfield  Wash.  Which  are  we  to 
believe,  and  how  is  the  false  evidence  (for  one  set 
of  witnesses  must  have  given  false  evidence)  to  be 
accounted  for  ?  It  does  not  appear  that  any  of 
the  witnesses  except  Canning  herself  lied  inten- 
tionally. We  must  also  ask  how  the  original  story, 
if  false,  was  suggested  ;  and  this  seems  to  be  easily 


144  Among  My  Books 

explicable.  Miss  Canning  did  not  mention  an 
names  when  she  came  home.  She  spoke  of  bein 
confined  in  some  unknown  house.  Then,  said  on 
of  her  friends,  it  must  have  been  *  Mother  Wells' 
house.  She  accepted  the  name  when  suggestec 
and  a  warrant  was  thereupon  taken  out  agains 
Mrs  Wells.  A  large  party  of  excited  friends  wen 
with  Miss  Canning  to  identify  the  place.  Some  c 
them  got  there  before  her,  and  finding  that  a  roor 
in  it  did  not  correspond  to  her  description  (sh 
had  not  mentioned,  for  example,  some  hay,  c 
which  it  was  partly  full),  went  back  to  her  an( 
asked  whether  they  were  on  the  right  track.  Sh 
immediately  modified  her  account  to  meet  the  case 
now,  for  the  first  time,  mentioning  the  hay.  Whei 
she  had  reached  the  house,  the  gipsy  came  in  wit! 
the  crowd,  and  Miss  Canning,  when  asked  t< 
identify  her  assailant,  immediately  pitched  upoi 
this  hideous  old  lady  as  her  gaoler.  This  alone  i 
enough  to  suggest  how  the  story  was  constructee 
by  degrees,  as  the  materials  were  provided  bj 
ofificious  assistants. 

The  two  masses  of  evidence  as  to  the  alibi  ma3 
now  be  contrasted.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  doub 
that  the  Dorsetshire  witnesses  were  speaking 
honestly.  The  stories  which  they  told  were  in 
dependent  ones,  but  fitted  into  each  other  very  ac 
curately.  The  gipsies  were  traced  to  a  number  o 
different  villages  in  succession.  Various  little  in 
cidents  occurred  ;  a  dance  at  one  place,  crossing  i 
flood  at  another,  a  meeting  of  the  gipsy's  daughtei 


An  Old  Puzzle  145 

•with  her  sweetheart,  and  so  forth.  All  the  inci- 
dents, mentioned  by  independent  witnesses  at 
different  places  and  times,  dovetail  with  each 
other.  To  combine  so  various  a  set  of  incidents 
with  a  single  thread  would  be  scarcely  possible 
if  they  were  not  substantially  true.  The  only  real 
question  was  as  to  the  date.  Here,  again,  the 
evidence  was  satisfactory.  One  of  the  witnesses, 
for  example,  was  an  exciseman,  the  date  of  whose 
presence  at  a  village  was  clearly  fixed  by  the 
official  record  of  his  employment.  The  gipsy's 
daughter,  in  another  place,  had  got  a  woman  to 
write  a  letter  to  her  sweetheart,  and,  though  the 
postmark  was  injured,  the  date  seems  to  have  been 
sufficiently  proved.  Although,  therefore,  the  evi- 
dence had,  no  doubt,  been  carefully  got  up  by  one 
of  the  gipsy's  supporters,  it  seems  to  be  very  diffi- 
cult to  account  for  it  by  any  hypothesis  of  honest 
mistake. 

The  conflicting  evidence,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
throughout  liable  to  an  obvious  objection.  A 
number  of  people  swore,  and,  no  doubt,  honestly, 
that  they  had  seen  old  Mrs  Squires  at  Enfield  in 
January.  In  some  cases  they  fixed  the  time  by 
some  incident  which  was  of  tolerably  certain  date. 
But  in  almost  all,  if  not  all,  cases  the  gipsy  had  no 
specific  connection  with  the  incident.  She  was 
merely  passing  at  the  time,  and  it  might  well  be 
that  they  had  simply  made  some  error  as  to  the 
connection  between  the  two  events  or  as  to  the 
time  at  which  the  incident  occurred.     In  one  case 

K 


146  Among  My  Books 

this  was  clearly  made  out.  The  gipsy  had  been 
really  seen  by  a  person  bringing  back  some  work 
to  a  shop.  It  was  proved  from  the  books  that  the 
work  was  really  brought  back  some  days  later  than 
the  witness  supposed,  and,  therefore,  at  a  time  when 
the  gipsy  had  admittedly  returned.  Consequently 
it  is  easy  to  suppose  that  the  facts  alleged  really 
happened,  but  in  different  connections.  There  was 
great  excitement  at  Enfield,  where  subscriptions 
were  being  raised,  and  everybody  taking  a  side  in 
the  question  which  had  made  the  place  famous. 
There  was,  as  one  witness  puts  it,  a  '  hurly-burly ' ; 
everybody  was  trying  to  remember  anything  that 
could  throw  light  upon  the  story ;  many  people  did, 
in  fact,  remember  having  seen  the  gipsy  pass,  and 
even  having  had  some  words  with  her  about  her 
business — which  was  hawking  smuggled  goods  ; 
and  the  one  thing  necessary  to  make  the  evidence 
relevant  was  some  blunder  about  dates.  It 
happened  that  the  change  of  style  had  just  taken 
place ;  and  there  is  a  confusion  between  old  and 
new  Christmas  Day,  which  perplexes  several  of  the 
witnesses.  Many  of  them  could  not  read,  and  had 
vague  notions  about  the  calendar.  Finally,  the 
stories  are  not  mutually  confirmatory  ;  they  do  not, 
like  the  Dorsetshire  stories,  dovetail  with  each 
other ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  perfectly  easy  to  be- 
lieve that,  without  conscious  lying,  the  witnesses 
had  become  honestly  confused  about  dates  which 
had  occurred  some  months  beforehand. 

On  the  whole,  when  we  can  see  how  the  original 


An  Old  Puzzle  147 

story  might  be,  and  in  fact  apparently  was  con- 
cocted ;  and  when  we  can  accept  an  hypothesis 
which  fully  accounts  for  one  mass  of  erroneous 
evidence  without  supposing  perjury,  while  it  seems 
impossible  to  explain  the  conflicting  evidence 
without  supposing  its  substantial  truth,  the  con- 
clusion seems  to  be  as  clear  as  can  be  expected. 
We  fully  believe  that  Miss  Canning  was  guilty  of 
perjury ;  though  she  had  not,  it  is  said,  any  other 
stain  upon  her  character.  Where  she  was  in 
January,  1753,  can  never  be  known  ;  but  it  is  easy 
to  suggest  reasons  why  retirement  might  be  con- 
venient which  it  would  be  very  undesirable  either 
for  her  or  her  friends  to  reveal.  Still  she  has  given 
us  so  much  amusement  that  we  have  a  kind  of 
pleasure  in  hearing  that,  when  transported  to 
America,  she  was  kindly  treated,  made  a  respect- 
able marriage,  lived  very  happily  ever  afterwards, 
and  has  left  descendants  living  at  this  day.  Per- 
haps they  still  believe  her  story.  Voltaire  inferred 
from  the  case  the  inferiority  of  English  criminal 
law  to  the  French  procedure,  illustrated  by  the 
persecution  of  Calas.  Certainly  any  one  reading 
the  case  will  admit  that  in  the  abused  i8th  century 
trials  might  be  fairly  conducted,  and  that  some 
people  escaped  the  gallows  on  rather  easy  terms. 


XXI 
*  PICKWICK' 

BY  PERCY  FITZGERALD 

IT  would  be  vain  to  praise  or  to  disparage  the 
immortal  *  Pickwick.'  Everything  about  it  is 
remarkable.  No  modern  work  of  the  century 
has  engendered  so  many  other  books,  commen- 
taries, illustrations,  etc.,  or  been  so  Protean  in  its 
developments.  Drama,  opera,  music,  translations 
pictures,  topography,  philology,  almanacs,  song- 
sters, advertisements,  pens,  cigars,  all  exhibit  this 
generative  influence.  There  is  a  little  library  of 
writers  on  'Pickwick.'  Grave  Professors,  men  of 
law,  politicians,  schoolmasters,  have  been  drawn 
to  it.  Mr  Lang,  Professor  Ward,  Rimmer,  Frost, 
Hughes,  Kitton,  Ashby  S terry — American  as  well 
as  English — all  have  expatiated  on  the  subject. 
Neither  Scott,  nor  Thackeray,  nor  Byron,  nor 
Macaulay,  nor  Tennyson  can  show  anything 
like  it.  The  commentary  on  the  Waverleys  is 
quite  meagre  by  comparison.  The  oddity,  too, 
is  that  no  other  work  of  *  Boz's '  has  had  this 
fruitfulness. 


150  Among  My  Books 

The  reason  would  seem  to  be  the  tone  of  perfect 
conviction  and  reality  in  which  it  is  conceived  and 
carried  out.  The  characters  are  treated  almost 
biographically,  and  move  forward  according  to  its 
dates.  A  single  passage,  selected  at  random,  will 
show  this  feeling : 

The  remainder  of  the  period  which  Mr  Pickwick  had  assigned  as 
the  duration  of  his  stay  at  Bath  passed  over  without  the  occurrence 
of  anything  material.  Trinity  Term  commenced.  On  the  expiration 
of  its  first  week,  Mr  Pickwick  and  his  friends  returned  to  London, 
and  the  former  gentleman,  attended  of  course  by  Sam,  straightway 
repaired  to  his  old  quarters  at  the  George  and  Vulture. 

It  is  impossible  to  resist  this  particularity;  it  is  as 
though  we  were  reading  the  movements  of  a  living 
person  in  some  newspaper.  Further,  the  changes 
recorded  in  Mr  Pickwick's  character,  who,  from  a 
foolish  creature,  became  sensible,  will  not,  as 
Dickens  himself  explains,  *  appear  forced  or  un- 
natural, for  in  real  life  the  peculiarities  and  oddities 
of  a  man  generally  impress  us  at  first ;  it  is  not 
until  we  are  better  acquainted  with  him  that  we 
begin  to  look  below  these  superficial  traits.'  One 
reason  we  have  had  no  second  '  Pickwick '  from  the 
same  'eminent  hand,'  though  the  theatrical  pass- 
ages in  '  Nickleby '  are  thoroughly  Pickwickian, 
may  be  that  Dickens,  like  so  many  comic  actors, 
believed  that  his  real  forte  lay  in  the  highly- 
strained  and  highly-strung  pathetic.  His  broad 
humour,  as  he  fancied,  was  to  come  in,  like 
the  comic  scenes  in  Otway's  'Venice  Preserved/ 
just  to  relieve  the  gloom.     We  can  see  how  he  put 


'  Pickwick  '  151 


his  whole  soul  into  those  gruesome,  sentimental 
stories  introduced  into  '  Pickwick.'  This  gained 
more  and  yet  more  on  him  as  he  went  along,  until, 
after '  Chuzzlewit,'  it  became  the  staple  of  his  work. 
Indeed,  he  and  his  friend  Forster  always  thought 
rather  poorly  of  '  Pickwick,'  and  he  would  accept 
compliments  with  a  sort  of  good-natured  tolerance. 

The  name  Pickwick  was  supplied  from  Bath,  near 
which  city  there  is,  or  was,  a  hamlet  so  called.  A 
foundling,  discovered  here  by  a  mail-coach  guard, 
was  named  after  the  place,  and  grew  up  to  be  a 
great  coach  proprietor,  and  '  Boz,'  going  down  to 
Bath  in  1835,  must  have  noted  'Moses  Pick- 
wick' on  the  door  of  the  carriage.  The  book 
was  begun  at  Furnival's  Inn,  and  continued  at 
another  set  of  rooms — some  of  it  was  written  at 
Chalk,  a  village  in  Kent — and  it  was  concluded  at 
No.  48  Doughty  Street.  Forster  revised  some  of 
the  proofs,  but  the  MS.,  with  the  exception  of  a 
few  leaves  now  in  America,  has  disappeared. 

As  a  record  of  the  changes  in  manners, 
customs,  habits,  feelings,  and  dress  during  the  past 
sixty  years,  nothing  could  be  more  valuable,  no 
other  book  could  be  named  furnishing  the  same 
details. 

We  have  now  'An  Index  to  Pickwick,'  lately 
issued  by  Mr  Neale,  a  barrister  of  the  Temple, 
which  is,  perhaps,  the  most  striking  tribute  to  the 
force  and  fulness  of  the  book.  It  is  almost 
scientifically  done,  and,  from  the  variety  of  its 
entries,  furnishes  quite  a  Pickwickian  panorama- 


152  Among  My  Books 

Here  we  have  quaint  pre- Victorian  phrases,  traits 
of  manners  and  customs,  long  since  exploded  ; 
old  rare  jests,  topographical  allusions,  and  descrip- 
tions, costumes,  etc.  It  is  curious  what  a  gro- 
tesque sort  of  mosaic  is  thus  presented — something 
almost  macaronic.  Thus  under  'Jingle'  we  have 
all  the  salient  points  of  that  odd  creature's  career 
gathered  up,  and  the  analysis  of  his  proceedings 
strikes  us  as  odd  indeed.  Any  one  who  had 
never  seen  *  Pickwick '  and  glanced  over  this  index 
would  say — as  did  the  ostler  of  Burke — '  Here  is  a 
most  extraordinary  man.'  I  myself  have  just  com- 
pleted a  *  Pickwick  Dictionary  and  Cyclopaedia,' 
which  forms  an  amazing  repertory  of  all  the  hetero- 
geneous matters,  controversies,  and  facts  of  all  kinds 
engendered  by  the  book.  We  can  find  no  refer- 
ence to  the  profuse  drinking  that  goes  on;  cold 
punch  is  not  even  named,  nor  is  Jingle's  odd  phrase 
*  through  the  button-hole,'  which  called  for  a  regular 
exegesis  from  Mr  Walter  Wren.  Neither  is  there 
any  heading  on  the  important  subject  of  marriage, 
as  to  which  there  are  many  wise  and  profound 
remarks  scattered  through  the  book.  Witness 
that  admirable  caution  of  old  Weller's  :  '  To  see 
you  married,  Sammy  —  to  see  you  a  deluded 
wictim,  and  thinking  in  your  innocence  that  it 
is  all  werry  capital.'  Another  advantage  of  the 
index  is  that  it  emphasizes  the  many  humorous 
remarks  that  are  scattered  through  the  work. 
'  There's  a  providence  in  it  all,'  said  Sam.  '  O' 
course   there   is,'   replied   his   father,   with   a   nod 


'  Pickwick '  153 


of  grave  approval.  '  Wot  'ud  become  of  the 
undertakers  vithout  it,  Sammy  ?  ' — which  is  one 
of  the  most  humorous  sayings  in  the  whole,  and 
perfectly  sincere — for  Mr  Weller  may  have  been 
thinking  '  wot  'ud  become '  of  his  own  profession 
threatened  by  the  railways.  '  As  'ud  turpentine 
and  beeswax  his  memory ' ;  '  I  wish  I  was  behind 
him  with  a  bradall ' — these  are  racily  Pickwickian, 
and  our  memory  for  them  needs  not  such  stimulants. 
But  where  could  this  young  fellow — then  no 
more  than  twenty-four  years  old — have  found  this 
sagacity,  this  deep  knowledge  of  the  world,  of 
human  nature,  and  of  manners?  Assuredly  in 
the  hard  school  in  Chandos  Street,  among  the 
waifs  of  London,  and,  later,  when  grinding  at  the 
reporting  business.  He  is  a  Pickwickian  Marcus 
Aurelius.  He  drew  what  he  saw.  Jingle's  elope- 
ment, and  the  chaise  and  four,  the  hot  pursuit — 
so  vividly  done — were  recollections  of  his  own  re- 
porting excursions  to  Bath,  when  he  was  flying 
through  behind  four  horses  bearing  a  speech  to 
town.  Dickens  never  could  resist  drawing  from  a 
living  model,  and  was  most  successful  when  he  did 
so.  He  did  not  even  spare  his  father  and  mother, 
or  intimate  friends  like  Forster,  Landor,  and  Leigh 
Hunt.  '  Pickwick '  is  full  of  such  portraits.  Count 
Smorltork  was  from  Prince  Puckler-Muskau  ;  the 
traveller,  Dowler,  had  some  touches  of  Forster ; 
Mr  Pickwick  himself  from  an  old  gentleman 
named  Foster,  described  and  introduced  by  the 
publisher;   Jingle  and  Job  from  Robert  Macaire, 


154  Among  My  Books 

then  being  played  in  London  ;  the  hero  of  '  The 
Stroller's  Tale/  from  the  younger  Grimaldi. 
Weller  senior  was  from  a  well-known  stage  coach- 
man on  the  Rochester  road,  whom  Mrs  Lynn 
Linton  recalls  ;  '  the  fat  boy '  was  taken  from  one 
Buddcn  in  the  same  district ;  Nupkins  from  Mr 
Laing,  a  London  magistrate,  also  brought  on  in 
*  Oliver  Twist*  The  election  at  Eatanswill  was 
the  election  at  Ipswich  in  which  Mr  Morrison  and 
Sir  Fitzroy  Kelly  were  the  candidates.  I  have 
heard  the  late  Mr  Alfred  Morrison  tell  how 
Dickens  was  brought  into  the  committee-room  at 
the  Great  White  Horse,  in  reference  to  a  report  of 
the  speeches.  Fizkin,  the  other  candidate,  suggests 
Fitzroy.  Bantam,  the  M.C.,  is  said  in  Bath  to 
have  been  drawn  from  Colonel  Jervoise,  who  was 
M.C.  at  the  time  of  Boz's  visit.  He  was  scarcely, 
however,  the  ridiculous  person  Bantam  is  shown  to 
be,  for  he  later  became  a  knight,  general,  and 
governor  of  a  colony.  Still,  Dickens  sends  Sam 
up  to  the  M.C.'s  house  in  Queen  Square,  Bath ; 
and,  oddly  enough.  No.  14  Queen  Square  was 
the  actual  house  in  which  this  Colonel  Jervoise  lived. 
It  is  now  in  the  occupation  of  Mr  Austin  King. 
Buzfuz  was  the  father  of  the  present  Mr  Bompas, 
Q.C.,  and  Judge  Stareleigh,  Sergeant,  afterwards 
Judge  Gazelee.  The  "Chops  and  Tomato  Sauce" 
letters  were  parodies  of  those  in  the  Norton  case, 
to  which  also  a  strange  burst  in  the  story  of  Prince 
Bladud,  dealing  with  his  treatment  of  wives,  refers 
One  striking  social  change  that  has  occurred  since 


Pickwick'  155 


'Pickwick'  is  that  the  world  has,  as  it  were, 
put  back  the  clock  in  the  matter  of  age.  Mr 
Pickwick,  Mr  Tupman,  and  Mr  Wardle  are  all 
spoken  of  as  'old  gentlemen,'  yet  not  one  of  the 
trio  was  more  than  fifty.  '  Old  Wardle's '  mother 
was  alive  and  only  seventy-three  ;  the  spinster  aunt 
was  '  fifty  if  she  was  an  hour.'  Nowadays  a  well- 
preserved  man  of  sixty  is  merely  '  elderly.' 

Mr  Marcus  Stone,  once  walking  with  Dickens 
near  Gadshill,  noticed  a  grocer's  cart  with  the 
name  '  Weller '  on  it,  and  was  told  that  these 
tradesfolk  had  actually  suggested  the  name.  In 
fact,  there  can  be  seen  outside  Chatham  Church 
the  Weller  tomb,  with  the  names  of  the  family 
inscribed  thereon.  One  of  the  oddest  incidents 
connected  with  the  book,  where  all  is  so  odd  and 
grotesque,  is  that  Dickens  should,  long  after,  have 
known  intimately  a  Weller  family,  and  admired  a 
beautiful  Miss  Weller,  who  was  destined  to  be 
the  mother  of  two  gifted  women  — Lady  Butler  and 
Mrs  Meynell.  Further,  two  tragic  events  are 
associated  with  this  greatly  humorous  book,  and 
had  well-nigh  shipwrecked  it — the  first,  the  death 
of  Seymour,  the  artist  engaged,  by  his  own  hand  ; 
the  second,  the  death  of  the  author's  sister-in-law,  an 
interesting  girl,  who  expired  before  his  eyes.  This 
sad  business  actually  suspended  the  publication. 

Mr  Croker  indicated  a  line  of  inquiry  as  to 
Boswell's  great  book,  that  much  of  it  was  intended 
as  a  justification  of  his  own  weaknesses  and  follies. 
Pickwick,  in  like  manner,  is  much  concerned  with 


156  Among  My  Books 

Boz's  own  experiences,  feelings,  etc.  Here  is  one 
striking  specimen — Blacking,  shoe  cleaning,  etc.,  is 
gone  into  with  curious  particularity.  We  are  even 
told  that  at  the  White  Hart,  Boro',  they  used  Day 
&  Martin's,  not  Warren's,  blacking.  In  what 
other  novel  would  we  find  such  a  thing  noted  ? 
In  another  place  he  talks  of  Warren's  poetical 
advertisements.  But  everyone  knows  the  dismal 
passage  in  Forster's  'life,'  where  the  unhappy  little 
boy  was  put  to  paste  labels  on  the  bottles  of 
blacking,  and  where  the  misery  of  such  a  life  is 
looked  back  to  with  horror.  It  gave  him  a  ghastly 
pleasure  to  recur  to  this. 

I  have,  in  another  place,  shown  how  much 
Boswell  ran  in  *  Boz's '  head.  The  crumpet  story, 
of  course.  Mr  Pickwick  kissing  the  old  lady  was 
like  Dr  Johnson  kissing  the  old  Lady  Eglinton. 
But  a  more  curious  instance  is  the  use  of  the 
word  *  funny '  by  Jack  Bamber,  which  is  exactly 
the  same  sense  as  that  adopted  by  the  gentleman 
who  turned  round  to  Bozzy  at  the  play. 

It  is  extraordinary  how  the  Pickwickian  legend 
has  developed  in  the  case  of  inns  where  the  illus- 
trious traveller  was  supposed  to  have  put  up. 
Everywhere,  at  the  Bull,  Great  White  Horse, 
Angel,  Leather  Bottle,  etc.,  is  invariably  shown  a 
Mr  Pickwick's  room,  which  enthusiasts  asked  to  be 
allowed  to  sleep  in.  Even  at  the  Hop  Pole  at 
Tewkesbury — of  which  all  there  is  recorded  is  '  they 
stopped  to  dine,'  having  ale  and  more  Madeira,  be- 
sides '  replenishing  the  case  bottle  ' — Pickwickian 


Pickwick '  1 57 


memories  are  tenderly  cherished.  Mr  Ashby 
Sterry,  when  shown  the  sacred  chamber  at  the 
Great  White  Horse,  rather  nonplussed  the 
chambermaid  by  asking  where  Mr  Peter  Magnus 
had  slept.  But  she  adroitly  said  it  was  at  the 
other  side  of  the  house,  '  in  the  department  of 
another  lady.'  There  is  a  strong  link,  by  the 
way,  between  Dickens  and  Scott,  who  died  only 
four  years  before  '  Pickwick '  appeared.  Mr  George 
Hogarth — Dickens'  father-in-law — was  Scott's  man 
of  business,  and  took  part  in  all  the  Ballantyne 
imbroglio^  and  Boz  wrote  a  paper  on  the  dispute. 

All  sorts  of  odd,  out-of-the-way  conditions  at- 
tended the  book.  It  was  one  of  the  first  that  had 
appeared  in  the  unusual  shape  of  numbers,  or 
instalments,  and  green  covers ;  to  be  succeeded 
by  Lever,  with  his  *  Harry  Lorrequer '  in  pink,  and 
Thackeray  in  yellow.  This  form  has  long  since 
gone  out.  To  collect  '  Pickwicks  '  and  Pickwickiana 
requires  a  scientific  education  and  much  deep 
learning.  You  must  know  all  '  the  points.'  Has 
yours  the  green  cover  *  with  illustrations,'  or  '  illus- 
trations by  Seymour  and  Hablot  Browne  ? '  Are 
there  all  the  advertisements — Rowland's  Kalydor 
and  the  rest — all  '  the  addresses  ?  '  I  know  of 
collectors  who  have  a  separate  cardboard  case  for 
each  number.  Then  there  are  the  different  '  states' 
of  the  plates — the  '  Tony  Veller '  in  the  vignette  ; 
the  two  Chapters  XXV HI.  ;  and  a  score  of  other 
things.  A  really  good,  true,  and  perfect  copy  is 
worth  a  deal  of  money.     The  late  Frank  Marshall's 


158  Among  My  Books 

cost,  or  was  supposed  to  cost,  ;^ioo.  *  Pickwick '  is 
quoted  regularly  in  the  text-books,  in  Dr  Murray's 
Dictionary,  and,  stranger  still,  in  a  grave  legal 
work,  '  Taylor  on  Evidence,'  where  Sam's  examina- 
tion is  actually  given  in  full. 


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